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  1. aberrant love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Deviating from the proper or expected course.
  2. adj. Deviating from what is normal; untrue to type.
  3. n. One that is aberrant.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Wandering; straying from the right or usual course.
  2. In zoology and botany, differing in some of its characters from the group in which it is placed: said of an individual, a species, a genus, etc.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A person or object that deviates from what is normal in his group.
  2. n. biology A group, individual, or structure that deviates from the usual or natural type, especially with an atypical chromosone number.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Wandering; straying from the right way.
  2. adj. (Biol.) Deviating from the ordinary or natural type; exceptional; abnormal.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. one whose behavior departs substantially from the norm of a group
  2. adj. markedly different from an accepted norm

Etymologies

  1. From Latin aberrāns, present active participle of aberrō ("go astray; err"), from ab ("from") + errō ("to wander"). See aberr. (Wiktionary)
  2. Latin aberrāns, aberrant-, present participle of aberrāre, to go astray; see aberration. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “They rely on families to actually report what they call aberrant behavior.”

    CNN Transcript Dec 9, 2009

  • “Felipe Calderon went on Twitter to express dismay over what he called an "aberrant act of terror and barbarity.”

    News - latimes.com

  • “It also says some civilian supervisors are also at fault for ignoring clear signs of what it called his aberrant behavior.”

    NPR Topics: News

  • “More conspicuously aberrant is an example I read over the weekend:”

    Nouns of multitude

  • “This would mean that the morphological criteria on which extant supposed D. arnoldi and D. hololissa have been identified are utterly unreliable: an idea which matches suggestions that 'carapace morphology is sensitive to environmental conditions and that captivity can result in aberrant morphologies' (Palkovacs et al. 2003, p. 1409; see also Gerlach 2004b).”

    Archive 2006-02-01

  • “That suggests that the Washington Post poll, which reported a figure of 21%, was not a fluke or an "outlier," as Joe and pollster-folk like to call aberrant polls that you can't trust.”

    20% of adults self-identify as Republican

  • “You (and Iain Dale) miss the truly shocking thing on the leaflet, namely the aberrant apostrophe after Simon Hughes 'name.”

    The Man in the White Suit

  • “Species and groups of species which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life.”

    XV. Recapitulation and Conclusion

  • “Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life.”

    On the Origin of Species~ Chapter 14 (historical)

  • “Thus if Australia were destroyed, Didelphys in S. America would be wonderfully anomalous (this is your case with Proteaceae), whereas now there are so many genera and little sub-families of Marsupiata that the group cannot be called aberrant or anomalous.”

    More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘aberrant’.

Comments

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  • kingparton We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions—a practice now relegated to the aberrant and uneducated—was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming.

    T.S. Eliot, "Dante" Nov 12, 2011

  • Prolagus *snort* Mar 31, 2009

  • bilby It's the top bit. Above the greenberg, bloomberg, Allan Ginsberg, jarlsberg, Strindberg and Steven Spielberg. Mar 31, 2009

  • Prolagus Which part is "the tip of the iceberg"? Mar 31, 2009

  • emakrizi Some environmental hormones are believed to cause aberrant mating behavior.
    어떤 환경 호르몬�?� 변태�?�?� 성행위�?� �?�?��?� �?�기�?� 한다.

    His aberrant behaviors caused a lot of anxiety to his parents.
    그�?� 정�?�를 벗어난 행위 때문�? 부모님들�?� 걱정�?� 많�?� 하셨다.

    The incident reminded the public that old habits die hard and some wondered whether it's just the tip of the iceberg rather than the isolated action of an aberrant officer.
    �?�번 �?�분 사건�?� 구태가 사�?�지기 힘들다는 사실�?� 국민들�?게 �?�?�게 했고 �?��?�?서는 �?�번 사건�?� 비행 장�?�?� �?�출�?� 행�?��?��?�기 보다는 단지 빙산�?� �?��?�?�지 모른다고 여기고 있다. Mar 31, 2009

  • brusselsprouts As in the aberrant lifestyle I've been living lately can't continue... Jan 24, 2008

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‘aberrant’ has been looked up 6271 times, loved by 10 people, added to 117 lists, commented on 6 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.