You searched for: “distempers
distemper (s) (noun), distempers (pl)
1. Any mental or physical disorder or indisposition: Sometimes when Jill’s father hadn’t eaten anything for a long time, his good mood turned to distemper and he became quite disagreeable and ill humored.
2. A potentially fatal viral disease of animals. especially dogs and cats, characterized by rhinitis (inflammation of the mucous membrane lining the nose ), fever, and a loss of appetite: Distemper is a virus which can be extremely contagious among the canine animals and causes coughing and fever.
3. Etymology: from Old French destemprer,"to put out of order"; from Middle Latin distemperare from dis-, "undoing, reversal" + Latin temperare, "to mingle in due proportion, to combine properly, to moderate, to regulate"; from tempus, temporis, "time".
—Compiled from information located in
A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by
Dr.Ernest Klein; Elsevier Publishing Company;
New York; 1966; pages 464 & 465.

English has two distinct words for distemper although ultimately they come from the same source.

Latin temperare, "mingle" (source of English temper; derived from Latin tempus, "time, due time"; from temperate, and temperature. This formed the basis of two separate medieval Latin verbs, both compounded from the prefix dis- but using it in quite different ways.

  1. Dis- in the sense "reversal of a current state" joined with temperare in the specialized meaning, "mingle in proper proportion" to produce distemperare, "to upset the proper balance of bodily humours"; hence, "to vex, to make ill".

    This passed directly into English as distemper, and survives today mainly as the term for an infectious disease of dogs and cats.

  2. Dis- joined with temperare in its intensive function produced medieval Latin distemperare, "to mix thoroughly, to soak", which entered English via Old French destemprer in the 14th century.

    The meaning "to soak, to steep, to infuse" survived until the 17th century. The word's modern application, to a water-based decorator's paint, comes from the fact that the pigment is mixed with or infused in water (the same notion lies behind tempera, borrowed from Italian).

—Compiled from information located in
Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto;
Arcade Publishing; New York; 1990; page 176.
This entry is located in the following unit: tempo-, tempor-, temp- (page 1)
Word Entries containing the term: “distempers
feline distemper (s) (noun), feline distempers (pl)
An infectious viral disease of the members of the feline family which causes vomiting and diarrhea and is often fatal: Sadly, Lina's kitty recently died of feline distemper.
This entry is located in the following unit: feli-, felin-, felino- (page 1)