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Distemper   /dɪstˈɛmpər/   Listen
noun
Distemper  n.  
1.
An undue or unnatural temper, or disproportionate mixture of parts. Note: This meaning and most of the following are to be referred to the Galenical doctrine of the four "humors" in man. See Humor. According to the old physicians, these humors, when unduly tempered, produce a disordered state of body and mind.
2.
Severity of climate; extreme weather, whether hot or cold. (Obs.) "Those countries... under the tropic, were of a distemper uninhabitable."
3.
A morbid state of the animal system; indisposition; malady; disorder; at present chiefly applied to diseases of brutes; as, a distemper in dogs; the horse distemper; the horn distemper in cattle. "They heighten distempers to diseases."
4.
Morbid temper of the mind; undue predominance of a passion or appetite; mental derangement; bad temper; ill humor. (Obs.) "Little faults proceeding on distemper." "Some frenzy distemper had got into his head."
5.
Political disorder; tumult.
6.
(Paint.)
(a)
A preparation of opaque or body colors, in which the pigments are tempered or diluted with weak glue or size (cf. Tempera) instead of oil, usually for scene painting, or for walls and ceilings of rooms.
(b)
A painting done with this preparation.
Synonyms: Disease; disorder; sickness; illness; malady; indisposition; ailment. See Disease.


verb
Distemper  v. t.  (past & past part. distempered; pres. part. distempering)  
1.
To temper or mix unduly; to make disproportionate; to change the due proportions of. (Obs.) "When... the humors in his body ben distempered."
2.
To derange the functions of, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual; to disorder; to disease. "The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties."
3.
To deprive of temper or moderation; to disturb; to ruffle; to make disaffected, ill-humored, or malignant. "Distempered spirits."
4.
To intoxicate. (R.) "The courtiers reeling, And the duke himself, I dare not say distempered, But kind, and in his tottering chair carousing."
5.
(Paint.) To mix (colors) in the way of distemper; as, to distemper colors with size. (R.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Distemper" Quotes from Famous Books



... comrades, who were not sensible of their condition; but my senses being entire, you may easily guess that instead of growing fat, as the rest did, I grew leaner every day. The fear of death turned all my food into poison. I fell into a languishing distemper, which proved my safety; for the negroes, having killed and eaten my companions, seeing me to be withered, lean, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... damsel, she would prefer him to his rival. Nevertheless, the mother and kinsfolk chose the other suitor, because he was much richer; whereupon the poor gentleman, knowing his sweetheart to be as little pleased as himself, gave way to such sorrow, that by degrees, and without any other distemper, he became greatly changed, seeming as though he had covered the comeliness of his face with the mask of that death, to which hour by hour he was ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... habits.—In Dr. Norris's famous narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being questioned as to the occasion of the swelling in his legs, replies that it came "by criticism;" to which the learned doctor seeming to demur, as to a distemper which he had never read of, Dennis (who appears not to have been mad upon all subjects) rejoins, with some warmth, that it was no distemper, but a noble art; that he had sat fourteen hours a day at it; and that the other was a pretty doctor not to know that there ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... which I had given that friend, and having never heard anything of the experiment, nor having anybody near him who could tell him what this strange liquor might be, was a great while apprehensive, as he presently afterwards told me, that some strange new distemper was invading his eyes. And I confess that the unusualness of the phenomenon made me very solicitous to find out the cause of this experiment; and though I am far from pretending to have found it, yet my ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... whose loss afflicted him to the last degree, one Mrs. Mary Mordant, a gentlewoman of great virtue and piety, and a very good fortune, took him into her service, and carried him with her, first to Bath, and then to Bristol, where, after a lingering distemper, which continued for about four ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe


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