Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Deviating from the proper or expected course.
- adj. Deviating from what is normal; untrue to type.
- n. One that is aberrant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Wandering; straying from the right or usual course.
- 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
- n. A person or object that deviates from what is normal in his group.
- 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
- adj. Wandering; straying from the right way.
- adj. (Biol.) Deviating from the ordinary or natural type; exceptional; abnormal.
WordNet 3.0
- n. one whose behavior departs substantially from the norm of a group
- adj. markedly different from an accepted norm
Etymologies
- From Latin aberrāns, present active participle of aberrō ("go astray; err"), from ab ("from") + errō ("to wander"). See aberr. (Wiktionary)
- 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.”
“Felipe Calderon went on Twitter to express dismay over what he called an "aberrant act of terror and barbarity.”
“It also says some civilian supervisors are also at fault for ignoring clear signs of what it called his aberrant behavior.”
“More conspicuously aberrant is an example I read over the weekend:”
“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).”
“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.”
“You (and Iain Dale) miss the truly shocking thing on the leaflet, namely the aberrant apostrophe after Simon Hughes 'name.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘aberrant’.
-
GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
-
important
shamanism, consol, sanguine, iffy, affinity, concatenation, honed, innumberable, aiden, inexorable, vet, suss and 176 more...
-
GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
-
Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
-
A to abominator (Chambers)
aa gets over 40 hits
aardvark 49 hits
abbatoir 103 hits
abjure 138 hitsA, A-line, A-list, A-lister, A 1, A-road, A-side, from A to B, from A to Z, A-bomb, A-effect, A level and 254 more...
-
Quacksalvers et al. Nostrum
Bring forth the cathartic illumination on malignant,maniacal,medical,menage a trios and more egotists stymie
culpability, piousfraud, capacitous, rhabdomyolysis, scapula, idiosyncrasy, quiescent, malignant, nefarious, sociological, sociopath, pathogen and 202 more...
-
Learned
tutti, donnybrook, lambent, spiel, aberrant, asperity, abstruse, debauch, ebullient, Lebensraum, eschew, intersperse
-
GRE
GRE words from Princeton Review guide, ETS GRE Book from 2010 (for revised test), New Yorker/NY Times articles.
sycophant, obsequious, volubility, equanimity, enervate, effrontery, impertinent, platitude, impudence, quiescent, propitiate, equivocate and 124 more...
-
gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1827 more...
-
Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
-
to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
-
My GRE Vocab
moniker, sobriquet, prerogative, aberration, aberrant, nuance, notorious, infamous, content, refer, allude, renown and 109 more...
-
Neww
specious, disdainfully, vehemently, in lieu of, dismissive, perpetual, preposterous, impasse, fathom, conversely, repugnant, clogged and 142 more...
-
GRE Words
-
GRE
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abhor, abjure, abrasive, abridge, abstain, acme, activism, adhere, admonish and 195 more...
-
SAT Vocab
Redundant.
problematic, proclivity, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profane, profligate, profound, profusion, proliferation, prolific, prologue and 455 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for aberrant.
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