Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Absence of proportion, symmetry, or proper relation.
  • noun An instance of a disproportionate relation.
  • transitive verb To make disproportionate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Want of proportion of one thing to another, or between the parts of the same thing; lack of symmetry; absence of conformity or due relation in size, number, quantity, etc.: as, the disproportion of a man's arms to his body, or of means to an end; the disproportion between supply and demand.
  • noun Disproportion, some say, is the cause of the keenest misery in the world: for instance, the disproportion between the powers, capacities, and aspirations of man and his circumstances—especially as regards his physical wants.
  • To make unsuitable in dimensions or quantity; mismatch; join unfitly.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make unsuitable in quantity, form, or fitness to an end; to violate symmetry in; to mismatch; to join unfitly.
  • noun Want of proportion in form or quantity; lack of symmetry
  • noun Want of suitableness, adequacy, or due proportion to an end or use; unsuitableness; disparity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun something that is out of proportion; an abnormal or improper ratio; an imbalance
  • verb transitive To make unsuitable in quantity, form, or fitness; to violate symmetry in; to mismatch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun lack of proportion; imbalance among the parts of something

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dis- +‎ proportion

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Examples

  • The disproportion is all the more surprising because females watch more TV than males.

    Women Look at Online Video Differently | Impact Lab 2007

  • The disproportion is far more acute in The West Indies than it has been elsewhere.

    Challenge of the West Indies 1958

  • I don’t get claims that motherhood is ‘fetishized’ (I certainly did not get Cooke’s, and suspected that she does not understand the proper uses of the term ‘fetish’) – at the crudest level, ‘fetishize’ is used to refer to something being valued in disproportion to its worth, and I actually don’t think that that’s practically possible in the case of motherhood.

    Who’s The Dummy, Mummy? | Her Bad Mother 2009

  • Doesn’t really matter how far you go back, the Israeli’s failed to build on the Hamas truce and each escalation has been in disproportion to the cause.

    Think Progress » Neocons Resurrect Plans For Regional War In The Middle East 2006

  • He walked or sat with his eyes continually fixed upon these feet -- reproachfully, it seemed -- as if their disproportion were a source of perennial woe; he carried his arms looped behind him, and had acquired a peculiar stoop -- to facilitate his vigilant guardianship of his feet, apparently.

    The Gold-Stealers A Story of Waddy Edward Dyson 1898

  • Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves.

    Gorgias 427? BC-347? BC Plato 1855

  • Unless Israel uses what you call "disproportion", there won't be any Israel.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009

  • Unless Israel uses what you call "disproportion", there won't be any Israel.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009

  • A numerous nobility causeth poverty, and inconvenience in a state; for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity, that many of the nobility fall, in time, to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion, between honor and means.

    The Essays 2007

  • Roman Catholic and Protestant countries -- a disproportion which is so significant that comment upon it is unnecessary.

    The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 Devoted to Literature and National Policy Various

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