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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



... obedience to the stern commands of his benefactor. [173] The frequent disappointments of his ambitious views, the experience of six years of persecution, and the salutary reflections which a lingering and painful distemper suggested to the mind of Galerius, at length convinced him that the most violent efforts of despotism are insufficient to extirpate a whole people, or to subdue their religious prejudices. Desirous of repairing the mischief that he had occasioned, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... case is on record of the cholera having been transferred from Moscow to other places, and it is equally certain, that in no situation appointed for quarantine, any case of cholera has occurred. That the distemper is not contagious, has been yet more ascertained by the experience gathered in this city (Moscow). In many houses it happened, that one individual attacked by cholera was attended indiscriminately by all the relatives, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... their black pines and foaming torrents, are not precisely the Venice and the Alps of Ruskin; rather of the operatic stage. Still they are impressive in their way, and in this department she possessed genuine poetic feels and a real mastery of the art of painting in distemper. Witness the picture of the castle of Udolpho, on Emily's first sight of it, and the hardly less striking description, in the "Romance of the Forest," of the ruined abbey in which the La Motte family take refuge: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... physician. My other possessions, too, are a constant care. A man comes in, one day, and brings me sheep that have been torn by the wolves; and, on another day, tells me of oxen that have fallen from a precipice, or of a distemper which has broken out among the flocks or herds. My wealth, therefore, brings me only an increase of anxiety and trouble, without any addition to ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... behind the Carthaginians along tracks already rendered impassable: they murmured loudly and would undoubtedly have dispersed to a man, had not the Carthaginian cavalry under Mago, which brought up the rear, rendered flight impossible. The horses, assailed by a distemper in their hoofs, fell in heaps; various diseases decimated the soldiers; Hannibal himself lost an eye in consequence ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen


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