Distemper

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /dɪsˈtÉ›mpÉ™(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -É›mpÉ™(r)

Origin

From Old French destemprer, from Latin distemperare

Noun

1. (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...my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever...
3. A water-based paint.
• 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 10, 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.
4. A painting produced with this kind of paint.

Full definition of distemper

Verb

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.
• BuckminsterThe 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-humoured, or malignant.
• Coleridgedistempered spirits
4. To intoxicate.
• MassingerThe courtiers reeling,
  And the duke himself, I dare not say distempered,
  But kind, and in his tottering chair carousing.
5. To paint using distemper.
6. To mix (colours) in the way of distemper.to distemper colors with size