aberration
noun
ab·er·ra·tion
ˌa-bə-ˈrā-shən
1
b
: something or someone regarded as atypical and therefore able to be ignored or discounted
Harkins was to be regarded as an aberration among American military leaders …—Neil Sheehan
The U.S. establishment treated this grassroots movement almost as an aberration, virtually ignoring it.—Helen Caldicott
As for Putin's desire to lay waste to Chechnya, Western leaders largely dismiss it as an aberration …—The New Republic
2
: failure of a mirror, refracting surface, or lens to produce exact point-to-point correspondence between an object and its image
chromatic aberration
… the telescope suffers from a serious focusing problem, a condition known as spherical aberration, which causes the point-like images of stars to be surrounded by fuzzy haze.—M. Mitchell Waldrop
3
: unsoundness or disorder of the mind
4
: a small periodic change of apparent position in celestial bodies due to the combined effect of the motion of light and the motion of the observer
5
: an aberrant individual
aberrational
adjective
aberrational behavior
They react, often in anger, to particular decisions but tend to regard them as aberrational rather than systemic failures.
—Robert H. Bork
Love words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share