Definition of aberration
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
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
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Time Traveler for aberration
The first known use of aberration was in 1588
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