Aberrate
verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To go astray; to diverge; to deviate (from); deviate from. intransitive
"1765, Peter Dollond, letter to James Short dated 7 February, 1765, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Volume 55, London, 1766, p. 55, […] the surfaces of the concave lens may be so proportioned as to aberrate exactly equal to the convex lens, near the axis […]"
- 2 diverge or deviate from the straight path; produce aberration wordnet
- 3 To distort; to cause aberration of. transitive
"1893, Bret Harte, Sally Dows, Chapter 6, in Sally Dows and Other Stories, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 104, He saw them through no aberrating mist of tenderness or expediency—but with the single directness of the man of action."
- 4 diverge from the expected wordnet
Example
More examples"1765, Peter Dollond, letter to James Short dated 7 February, 1765, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Volume 55, London, 1766, p. 55, […] the surfaces of the concave lens may be so proportioned as to aberrate exactly equal to the convex lens, near the axis […]"
Etymology
From Latin aberrātus, perfect passive participle of aberrō (“wander, stray or deviate from”), formed from ab (“from, away from”) + errō (“stray”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.