# distemper
## English
### Etymology

From Old French destemprer, from Latin distemperare.

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /dɪsˈtɛmpə(ɹ)/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɛmpə(ɹ)

### Noun

distemper (countable and uncountable, plural distempers)
* (veterinary medicine, pathology) A viral disease of animals, such as dogs and cats, characterised by fever, coughing and catarrh.
* (archaic) A disorder of the humours of the body; a disease.
** 1624, John Donne, “1. Meditation”, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 8:O perplex'd diſcompoſition, O ridling diſtemper, O miſerable condition of Man.
** 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 105:[M]y spirits began to sink under the Burden of a strong Distemper, and Nature was exhausted with the Violence of the Fever […]
* A glue-based paint.
* (countable) A painting produced with this kind of paint.

#### Derived terms

* canine distemper
* canine distemper virus
* sleepy distemper
* throat distemper

#### Translations
### Verb

distemper (third-person singular simple present distempers, present participle distempering, simple past and past participle distempered)
* To temper or mix unduly; to make disproportionate; to change the due proportions of.
* To derange the functions of, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual; to disorder; to disease.
** c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]: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:The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties.
** 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter III.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC: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.
* 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,
    I have been long accustomed to defend you,
    To heal and pacify distempered spirits.
* To intoxicate.
** 1623, Philip Massinger, The Duke of Milan‎, act I, scene 1: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.
* To paint using distemper.
** 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.
** 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XIX, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:We cleaned out the cellars, fixed the shelves, distempered the walls, polished the woodwork, whitewashed the ceiling, stained the floor;
* To mix (colours) in the way of distemper.
    to distemper colors with size

#### Conjugation

$^†$ Archaic or obsolete.

#### Derived terms

* distemperer
* distemperment

### Anagrams

* imprested