Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AB-ER-RA'TION, n. [L. aberratio.]

1. The act of wandering from the right way; deviation from truth or moral rectitude; deviation from a straight line.
2. In astronomy, a small apparent motion of the fixed stars, occasioned by the progressive motion of light and the earth's annual motion in its orbit. By this, they sometimes appear twenty seconds distant from their true situation. – Lunier.
3. In optics, a deviation in the rays of light, when inflected by a lens or speculum, by which they are prevented from uniting in the same point. It is occasioned by the figure of the glass, or by the unequal refrangibility of the rays of light. – Encyc. Crown of aberration, a luminous circle surrounding the disk of the sun, depending on the aberration of its rays, by which its apparent diameter is enlarged. – Cyc.