Distempering

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of inducing a malady in animals for vaccination A method used in veterinary medicine to create a controlled illness for treatment assessment The act of instigating a disease condition in animals to evaluate health responses
2. The act of coating walls or surfaces with a type of paint or pigmented preparation ; the process of intentionally causing an illness in animals as a form of immunization
3. A technique of covering surfaces with an opaque paint usually made from pigments mixed with a binder ; inducing sickness in animals to stimulate protective immunity

Etymology: Its Latin ancestor, "distemperare," meant to mix things in the wrong proportion, from "dis-" (apart or amiss) and "temperare" (to mix in due measure). That same root gives us "temper," so the modern word for a bad mood and the word for a disordered body share an ancestor. Old French "destemprer" kept the sense of diluting or thinning something, which is why "distemper" later became the name for pigment mixed with water and glue in painting. In English, the word was tied to medieval medicine, which held that health depended on a balance of the four bodily humours. A distemper was any disturbance of that balance, meaning illness in general. Over time the sense narrowed to diseases of animals, and the verb's -ing form carries that veterinary sense, as in the process of causing such a disease.