Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Diseased or disordered.
- Put out of temper; ruffled; ill-disposed; disaffected.
- Deprived of temper or moderation; immoderate; intemperate: as, distempered zeal.
- Disordered; prejudiced; perverted: as, distempered minds.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Simple past tense and past participle of
distemper . - adjective archaic Affected with or suffering from
distemper ;diseased .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word distempered.
Examples
-
The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whom had lost a hand; a groom, three hog tenders, of whom one was ruptured, another "distempered" and the third a ten-year-old boy, and ten aged idlers including Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba and
American Negro Slavery A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime Ulrich Bonnell Phillips 1905
-
There were wall bookcases with glass doors, a few oak-framed engravings with a pale-green, "distempered" background, several chintz-covered sofas with cushions, and plenty of easy chairs.
-
It lay there in a wide distempered circle and then gathered itself together to jam at my feet and to giggle and to whee, and to laugh and to fall again into a puddle and to flatten out like pancake batter on a griddle...flat, but gelatin like, to pull in and regroup and to come at me again.
Burt Reynolds, the pig, and me. Calib Donigan 2012
-
Even in my distempered state, that sounded damned odd.
THE NUMBERS 2010
-
April had always seemed to be one of the most miserable months in the calender to her'the weather was hideously distempered, changing every few moments, and all of the changes unpleasant.
red dust Ryn Cricket 2010
-
As you may recall, Obama's fans quickly established a reputation of acting like brain-damaged weasels or rabid squirrels or distempered hyenas or crazed dingos or foul-mouthed Philistines or huns, or other such creatures.
-
He started walking farther up the beach, toward the Liquidora, a circling, chaotic eddy of currents the locals avoided and which was particularly distempered this evening.
Kook Peter Heller 2010
-
The walls were cream distempered, and the paint was grey.
-
On exactly the same grounds, would we bid our readers avoid works of distempered excitement; even when such are of the highest excellence in their class, as those of Ellis Bell and
-
On exactly the same grounds, would we bid our readers avoid works of distempered excitement; even when such are of the highest excellence in their class, as those of Ellis Bell and
stega45 commented on the word distempered
MISTAKE:
"The walls were cream distempered, and the paint was grey."
— Fictionaut, “In Spite of Their Declaration of Bombs”
IN FACT, this quotation is from Landfall by Nevil Shute!
June 10, 2011