Meaning of aberrate | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To go astray; to diverge; to deviate (from); deviate from.
   intransitive
2. To distort; to cause aberration of.
   transitive

Equivalents

Examples

“1765, Peter Dollond, letter to James Short dated 7 February, 1765, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Volume 55, London, 1766, p. 55, […] the surfaces of the concave lens may be so proportioned as to aberrate exactly equal to the convex lens, near the axis […]”

“Such, indeed, were the primitive regulations of the greater number⟳ of monastic institutions; but the abominable and luxurious indulgences into which they afterwards aberrated, the page of history amply unfolds.”

“1839, Thomas De Quincey, “Lake Reminiscences: No. V, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge” originally published in Tait’s Magazine, August 1839, in David Masson (editor), The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, London: A. & C. Black, 1896, Volume 2, Chapter 5, pp. 340-341, […] the barriers, which to them limit⟳ the view⟳, and give⟳ to it, together with the contraction, all the distinctness and definite outline of limitation, are, in nine cases out of ten, the product of their own⟳ defective and aberrating vision, and not real barriers at all.”

“[…] after all the Governor of a Southern state has got to try⟳ to act like⟳ he regrets having to aberrate from being a gentleman—”

“1893, Bret Harte, Sally Dows, Chapter 6, in Sally Dows and Other Stories, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 104, He saw⟳ them through no aberrating mist of tenderness or expediency—but with the single directness of the man of action.”

“He and Phœbe had had a senseless quarrel […] and she had left. It was an aberrated fulfillment of her old jesting threat that if he did not behave himself she would leave⟳ him.”

“Don’t imagine⟳ that there was any sudden and complete⟳ renunciation such as overcomes the luckless and often temporarily aberrated victim of a highly emotionalized revival meeting; this would have⟳ been, at best, but temporary.”

“1950, Louis S. London, Sexual Deviations, cited in reviews in Time, 17 April, 1950 (“Medicine: The Abnormal”) and Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association, Volume 43, August, 1950, p. 802, […] sexually aberrated individuals can be treated most successfully via the method of psycho-analytic psychotherapy.”

“As these monographs and as these occasional exhibition catalogues on some handful of Canadian Impressionists started to appear⟳, once again, I was surprised (to say⟳ it with the utmost respect⟳) that they were aberrated, there was no timeline, there was no continuity.”

CEFR level