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Aberration   /ˌæbərˈeɪʃən/   Listen
noun
Aberration  n.  
1.
The act of wandering; deviation, especially from truth or moral rectitude, from the natural state, or from a type. "The aberration of youth." "Aberrations from theory."
2.
A partial alienation of reason. "Occasional aberrations of intellect." "Whims, which at first are the aberrations of a single brain, pass with heat into epidemic form."
3.
(Astron.) A small periodical change of position in the stars and other heavenly bodies, due to the combined effect of the motion of light and the motion of the observer; called annual aberration, when the observer's motion is that of the earth in its orbit, and daily or diurnal aberration, when of the earth on its axis; amounting when greatest, in the former case, to 20.4'', and in the latter, to 0.3''. Planetary aberration is that due to the motion of light and the motion of the planet relative to the earth.
4.
(Opt.) The convergence to different foci, by a lens or mirror, of rays of light emanating from one and the same point, or the deviation of such rays from a single focus; called spherical aberration, when due to the spherical form of the lens or mirror, such form giving different foci for central and marginal rays; and chromatic aberration, when due to different refrangibilities of the colored rays of the spectrum, those of each color having a distinct focus.
5.
(Physiol.) The passage of blood or other fluid into parts not appropriate for it.
6.
(Law) The producing of an unintended effect by the glancing of an instrument, as when a shot intended for A glances and strikes B.
Synonyms: Insanity; lunacy; madness; derangement; alienation; mania; dementia; hallucination; illusion; delusion. See Insanity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Aberration" Quotes from Famous Books



... nine of them in all, Paul, the newcomer making the tenth. They were all advanced in years, except one young woman, who was prevented by mental aberration from supporting herself outside the walls of ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... see from it that gravity does not travel like light, so as to take time on its journey from sun to planet; for, if it did, there would be a sort of aberration, and the force on its arrival could no longer be accurately directed to the centre of the sun. (See Nature, vol. xlvi., p. 497.) It is a matter for accuracy of observation, therefore, to decide whether the minutest trace of such deviation can be detected, i.e. within what ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... in hopes that he might suggest some plan by which she could accomplish her end. To him she was but another case of a badly working mechanism. Either from the blow on her head or from hereditary influences she had a predisposition to a fixed idea. That tendency had cultivated this aberration about the woman her husband preferred to her. Should she happen on this woman in her wanderings about Chicago, there would be one of those blind newspaper tragedies,—a trial, and a term of years in prison. As he meditated on this an idea seized ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... with a projecting hood that had a remote resemblance to a bowed head, and, squatting like some metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered to its needs, it seemed to Denton in certain moods almost as if this must needs be the obscure idol to which humanity in some strange aberration had offered up his life. His duties had a varied monotony. Such items as the following will convey an idea of the service of the press. The thing worked with a busy clicking so long as things went well; but if the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... But criticism of this aberration cannot hurt the wondrous inspired work directed by Morris, and which it were well for a beauty-loving world to have often repeated. Unhappily, the Merton Abbey works are bound not to repeat the superb series of the Grail. The ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee


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