Emily Dickinson Lexicon

DIS-TRAC'TION, n. [L. distractio.]

1. The act of distracting; a drawing apart; separation.
2. Confusion from multiplicity of objects crowding on the mind and calling the attention different ways; perturbation of mind; perplexity; as, the family was in a state of distraction. [See 1 Cor. vii.]
3. Confusion of affairs; tumult; disorder; as, political distractions. Never was known a night of such distraction. – Dryden.
4. Madness; a state of disordered reason; franticness; furiousness. [We usually apply this word to a state of derangement which produces raving and violence in the patient.]
5. Folly in the extreme, or amounting to insanity. On the supposition of the truth of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, irreligion is nothing better than distraction. – Buckminster.