different between indisposition vs distemper

English

Etymology

From Middle English indisposicioun, from Middle French indisposicion.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?n?d?sp??z???n/

Noun

indisposition (countable and uncountable, plural indispositions)

1. A mild illness, the state of being indisposed.
   • 1751, Henry Fielding, Amelia, Book 3, Chapter 7,^[1]

     I was scarce sooner recovered from my indisposition than Amelia herself fell ill.

   • 1817, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 23,^[2]

     She began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself.
2. A state of not being disposed to do something; disinclination; unwillingness.
   • 1989, Thomas Robert Malthus, John Pullen, Principles of Political Economy (volume 2, page 435)

     He argued that the progress of wealth could be impeded not only by an indisposition to produce, but also by an indisposition to consume […]

3. A bad mood or disposition.
   • 1597, Francis Bacon, Essays

     Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

Translations

English

Etymology

From Old French destemprer, from Latin distemperare.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d?s?t?mp?(?)/
• Rhymes: -?mp?(?)

Noun

distemper (countable and uncountable, plural distempers)

1. (veterinary medicine, pathology) A viral disease of animals, such as dogs and cats, characterised by fever, coughing and catarrh.
2. (archaic) A disorder of the humours of the body; a disease.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, London: W. Taylor, 3rd edition, p. 105,^[1]

     […] my spirits began to sink under the Burden of a strong Distemper, and Nature was exhausted with the Violence of the Fever […]

3. A glue-based paint.
4. A painting produced with this kind of paint.

Translations

Verb

distemper (third-person singular simple present distempers, present participle distempering, simple past and past participle distempered)

1. To temper or mix unduly; to make disproportionate; to change the due proportions of.
2. To derange the functions of, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual; to disorder; to disease.
   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2,^[2]

     Guildenstern. The King, sir—

     Hamlet. Ay, sir, what of him?

     Guildenstern. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper’d.

     Hamlet. With drink, sir?

     Guildenstern. No, my lord; rather with choler.

   • 1814, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, Sermons, Boston: John Eliot, Sermon XVI, p. 267,^[3]

     The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 3,^[4]

     To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a frame constitutionally sound, and which anon throws it off.

3. To deprive of temper or moderation; to disturb; to ruffle; to make disaffected, ill-humoured, or malignant.
   • 1799-1800, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (translator), The Piccolomini by Friedrich Schiller, Boston: Francis A. Niccolls & Co., 1902, p. 37,^[5]

     I have been long accustomed to defend you,

     To heal and pacify distempered spirits.

4. To intoxicate.
   • 1623, Philip Massinger, The Duke of Milan, Act I, Scene 1,^[6]

     For the Courtiers reeling,

     And the Duke himselfe, (I dare not say distemperd,

     But kind, and in his tottering chaire carousing)

     They doe the countrie service.

5. To paint using distemper.
6. To mix (colours) in the way of distemper.

   to distemper colors with size

Conjugation

Anagrams

• imprested