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WordWealth: aberrant
ab·er·rant
 ,
adj.
1. departing from
the right, normal, or usual course; 2. deviating from the
ordinary, usual, or normal type; exceptional; abnormal. symbols
–n.
3. an aberrant
person, thing, group, etc.
[1820–30; < L
aberrant- (s. of aberr ns,
prp. of aberrre
to deviate). See AB-, ERRANT]
—ab·er rance,
ab·erran·cy,
n.
—ab·errant·ly,
adv.
—Syn.1. wandering.
2. divergent, unusual.
(Random
House Webster's, Unabridged). Look at
Thesaurus
What struck me when I reread
Wolf Solent recently was not
its weirdness but its compassion for the down-and-out, the aberrant,
and the misbegotten. What also struck me was its casual attitude
toward polymorphous sex. "Natural or unnatural.". ——
Lawrence Millman in
An Irresistible Long-winded Bore,
The Atlantic,
August 2000 This is not to quarrel
with statistics which place the convict's intelligence quotient nearly
as high as that of his counterpart in free society; it is merely to
say that he lacks the particular quality of mind--call it
clearheadedness and plain common sense--which would let him think in
an orderly manner and arrive at sensible conclusions. Nor is it to say
that all convicts, or even most of them, are positively aberrant.
It is only to say that the same "determining percentage" of them
are--and in prison this percentage need not be large, although in a
general, unclassified prison it is likely to be. —— H.W.
Hollister in
Why Prisoners Riot,
The Atlantic, Oct 1955 Its principal features are a
regressive tax cut, ''the plundering of nonrenewable natural
resources'' and the substitution of a '' 'faith-based' religious
charity'' for the New Deal-Great Society social safety net at home.
Lind hopes that ''for the sake of America as well as the world'' the
advocates of this ''bizarre strategy'' will be defeated in 2004. This
''aberrant president,'' Lind asserts, is ''one of the worst in
American history.'' ——
Book
review desk,
The Really Deep Southern Strategy,
NYT, Jan 12, 2003
Usage note (American Heritage Dictionary):
Traditionally aberrant has been pronounced with stress on the
second syllable. In recent years, however, a pronunciation with stress
on the first syllable has become equally common and may eventually
supplant the older pronunciation. This change is owing perhaps to the
influence of the words aberration and aberrated, which
are stressed on the first syllable. The Usage Panel was divided almost
evenly on the subject: 45 percent preferred the older pronunciation
and 50 percent preferred the newer one. The remaining 5 percent of the
Panelists said they use both pronunciations. Look at
Thesaurus in depth
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