distraction
/dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/ noun B2- Something that distracts. · Poking one's eye is a good distraction from a hurting toe.
- The process of being distracted. · We have to reduce distraction in class if we want students to achieve good results.
- Perturbation; disorder; disturbance; confusion.
- Mental disarray; a deranged state of mind; insanity. · The incessant nightmares drove him to distraction.
Plural distractions
From the library
I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man.
Nor did he seem much more at ease; when he spoke, his accent had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his inquiries as to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her stay in Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the distraction of his thoughts.
“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.
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