2. To derange the functions of, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual; to disorder; to disease. Shak. The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties. Buckminster.
3. To deprive of temper or moderation; to disturb; to ruffle; to make disaffected, ill-humored, or malignant. "Distempered spirits." Coleridge.
4. To intoxicate. [R.]
The courtiers reeling, And the duke himself, I dare not say
distempered, But kind, and in his tottering chair carousing.
Massinger.
5. (Paint.)
Defn: To mix (colors) in the way of distemper; as, to distemper colors with size. [R.]
DISTEMPER
Dis*tem"per, n. Etym: [See Distemper, v. t., and cf. Destemprer.]
1. An undue or unnatural temper, or disproportionate mixture of parts. Bacon.
Note: This meaning and most of the following are to be referred to the Galenical doctrine of the four "humors" in man. See Humor. According to the old physicians, these humors, when unduly tempered, produce a disordered state of body and mind.
2. Severity of climate; extreme weather, whether hot or cold. [Obs.] Those countries . . . under the tropic, were of a distemper uninhabitable. Sir W. Raleigh.
3. A morbid state of the animal system; indisposition; malady; disorder; — at present chiefly applied to diseases of brutes; as, a distemper in dogs; the horse distemper; the horn distemper in cattle. They heighten distempers to diseases. Suckling.