intemperance

plural intemperances · alternative obsolete intemperaunce · alternative obsolete intemperancy

1. countableuncountableLack of moderation or temperance; excess.

   Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.

   1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LXVIII, in Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book (please specify |book=I to VIII)

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   They deserved the enmity of the Pagans; and some of them might deserve the reproaches of avarice and intemperance; of avarice, which they gratified with holy plunder, and of intemperance, which they indulged at the expense of the people, who foolishly admired their tattered garments, loud psalmody, and artificial paleness.

   1781, Edward Gibbon, chapter XXVIII, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume III, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC

2. countableuncountableDrunkenness or gluttony.

   How can we marvel that the constitution thus disposed to intemperance finds the stimulus of drink indispensable?

   1890, William Booth, chapter 6, in In Darkest England and the Way Out

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   As I supported him towards his lodgings I could see that he was not only suffering from the effects of a recent debauch, but that a long course of intemperance had affected his nerves and his brain. […] He rambled in his speech, too, in a manner which suggested the delirium of disease rather than the talk of a drunkard.

   1884, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Barrington Cowles