distemper
noun
- type of paint
verb
- to mix pigments with water or glue, or paint with this mixture
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /dɪsˈtɛmpə(ɹ)/
noun
Etymology: From Old French destemprer, from Latin distemperare.
- A viral disease of animals, such as dogs and cats, characterised by fever, coughing and catarrh.
- A disorder of the humours of the body; a disease.
“[…] and is the onlie laſt remedie for all debilities which haue long vexed the body through a hote diſtemper of the Lever, ſuch as a hote Gutte; it allayeth all Inflamations inward & outward.”
“O perplex'd diſcompoſition, O ridling diſtemper, O miſerable condition of Man.”
- A glue-based paint.
- A painting produced with this kind of paint.
verb
Etymology: From Old French destemprer, from Latin distemperare.
- 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.
“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.”
“The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties.”
- 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.
“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.
“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.”
“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”