PronounceGlobe

Definition

To go astray; to diverge; to deviate (from); deviate from.

From Latin aberrātus, perfect passive participle of aberrō (“wander, stray or deviate from”), formed from ab (“from, away from”) + errō (“stray”).

"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 […]"
"Such, indeed, were the primitive regulations of the greater number of monastic institutions; but the abominable and luxurious indulgences into which they afterwards aberrated, the page of history amply unfolds."
"1839, Thomas De Quincey, “Lake Reminiscences: No. V, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge” originally published in Tait’s Magazine, August 1839, in David Masson (editor), The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, London: A. & C. Black, 1896, Volume 2, Chapter 5, pp. 340-341, […] the barriers, which to them limit the view, and give to it, together with the contraction, all the distinctness and definite outline of limitation, are, in nine cases out of ten, the product of their own defective and aberrating vision, and not real barriers at all."