interrupt

fe’l verb

1. To disturb or halt (an ongoing process or action, or the person performing it) by interfering suddenly. A maverick politician repeatedly interrupted the debate by shouting.
2. To divide; to separate; to break the monotony of. The evenness of the road was not interrupted by a single hill.
3. To assert to (a computer) that an exceptional condition must be handled. The packet receiver circuit interrupted the microprocessor.

ot noun

1. An event that causes a computer or other device to temporarily cease what it was doing and attend to a condition. The interrupt caused the packet handler routine to run.