DISPROPORTION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does disproportion mean? 

• DISPROPORTION (noun)
  The noun DISPROPORTION has 1 sense:

1. lack of proportion; imbalance among the parts of something

  Familiarity information: DISPROPORTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISPROPORTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lack of proportion; imbalance among the parts of something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes

Hypernyms ("disproportion" is a kind of...):

disparity (inequality or difference in some respect)

Antonym:

proportion (balance among the parts of something)

 Context examples 

A three weeks' residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at least, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between thirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind which needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, all the kindness of her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother's language, to make it cheerful.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage, places her disappointment not to faults of judgment, or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being, after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway, and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious, provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)