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Permanent link for this word: daltonism

Feb 4, 2010

This week's theme
Eponyms

This week's words
Annie Oakley
John Bull
Maginot line
daltonism
methuselah

John Dalton

Photo: John Dalton and the Rise of Modern Chemistry, by Henry Roscoe

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with Anu Garg

daltonism

PRONUNCIATION:

(DAWL-tuh-niz-em)

MEANING:

noun: Color blindness, especially the inability to distinguish between red and green.

ETYMOLOGY:

After John Dalton (1766-1844), chemist and physicist, who gave us Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures. He studied his own color blindness as well.

USAGE:

"Theodore R. Weeks refers to 'national daltonism: the extreme difficulty nationalists had... in perceiving and appreciating the viewpoints or needs of members of other nationalities."
Stephen D. Corrsin; Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia; Canadian Slavonic Papers (Ottawa); Sep-Dec 1999.

See more usage examples of daltonism in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Poverty is the worst form of violence. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

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