adjustment
(əˈdʒʌstmənt)
[ad. Fr. ajustement: see adjust v. and -ment.]
1. The process of adjusting; setting right, regulating, arranging, settling, harmonizing, or properly disposing; freq. in contexts of emotional adaptation.
| 1644 Milton Jus Pop. 60 Fit for that adjustment of time, and other circumstances. 1678 Trans. at Crt. Spain ii. 92 There arose new difficulties in the adjustment of our troubles. 1769–90 Sir J. Reynolds Disc. xi. (1876) 25 His principal care and attention seems to have been fixed on the adjustment of the whole. 1814 Scott Wav. xlii. (1862) 187 The rest of the apparel required little adjustment. 1869 Tyndall Light §177, 26 The eye possesses a power of adjustment for different distances. 1881 R. Routledge Science i. 12 The adjustment of the calendar was a subject which received much attention. 1881 Mivart in Nature No. 614, 326 Of all the races of men they are the mightiest and most noble who are, or by self-adjustment can become, most fit for all the new conditions of existence in which by various changes they may be placed. 1912 A. A. Brill tr. Freud's Sel. Papers on Hysteria i. 8 Those psychic traumas which are not rectified by reaction are also prevented from adjustment by associative elaboration. 1922 R. S. Woodworth Psychol. iv. 72 Much used..are ‘adjustment’ and ‘mental set’, the idea here being to liken the individual to an adjustable machine which can be set for one or another set of work. 1957 P. Halmos Towards Measure of Man. ii. 40 Modern psychologists and psychiatrists distinguish two major stages in the process of adjustment. The instinctual development of the infant.. and the treatment he receives from his environment..combine in a primary process of adjustment... A secondary process of adjustment..goes on from about the fifth year of life till its end. 1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 16 Jan. 29/2 Three of them emerge to face life again; the fourth..refuses to make the effort of adjustment. |
2. The state or condition of being adjusted, or put in proper order; arrangement, settlement.
| 1689 Lond. Gaz. mmcccclxv/3 The Business of Holstein was in a very fair way to an Adjustment. 1713 Guardian No. 27 (R.) Say if there be not a connexion, and adjustment, and exact and constant order discoverable in all the parts of it. 1798 Wellington in Gen. Desp. I. 5 A regular mode of bringing to an amicable adjustment..any questions which might hereafter arise. 1840 Carlyle Heroes (1858) 272 The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its fierceness? 1863 Fawcett Pol. Econ. iii. iii. 321 The prices obtained for the produce..cause everything to be in a state of perfect adjustment. |
3. An arrangement or means whereby things are adjusted.
| 1736 Butler Anal. i. v. 131 Unsettle the adjustments and alter the proportions, which formed it. 1793 Wollaston Transit Circle in Phil. Trans. LXXXIII. 138 The adjustments of the Ys are both of them at the same end of the axis, opposite to the divided circle and the microscopes. 1871 Tyndall Frag. Sc. I. vi. (ed. 6) 207 This instrument, with its wheels and verniers, and delicate adjustments. |
4. Comm. The settlement among various parties of their several shares in respect of claims, liabilities, or payments; as the adjustment of the policy or adjustment of general average in Marine Insurance.
| c 1670 in Burton Diary (1828) III. 548 Yesterday the said resident signed the adjustment of the sum, with the deputies of the States General. 1842 Park Law Mar. Insur. I. vi. 267 The policy had been adjusted by the defendant at 50l. per cent., and it was contended that he was now bound by that adjustment. 1848 Arnould Mar. Insur. i. iv. (1866) I. 182 The several underwriters, as this indorsement is submitted to them, sanction it with their initials, and this is called the adjustment of the policy. Ibid. iii. iv. II. 772 The ascertainment of the damage done and of the sums to be paid in contribution by the parties or their underwriters, is called the adjustment of general average. |
5. attrib. in adjustment award, adjustment committee, adjustment levy, adjustment method.
| 1897 C. H. Judd tr. Wundt's Outl. Psychol. iii. 257 The adjustment-methods. Among these, we have..the ‘method of minimal change’, and then as a kind of modification of this for the case of adjustment until equality is reached, the ‘method of average error’. 1904 Kipling Traffics & Discov. 251 The Adjustment Committee—the umpires of the Military Areas. 1920 Act 10 Geo. V, c. 4 §2 If the profits..exceed the sum apportioned to that undertaking,..the excess shall be payable to the Controller by the owner of the undertaking and shall be recoverable as a debt due to the Crown, and the amount so payable is in this Act referred to as adjustment levy. Ibid., Any sum so payable [by the Controller] is in this Act referred to as adjustment award. |
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Add: 6. Special Comb. adjustment centre U.S., part of a prison reserved for the solitary confinement of refractory or unstable prisoners.
| 1955 Proc. Congr. Amer. Correctional Assoc. LXXXV. 147 The term *Adjustment Center has been introduced in the nomenclature of the prison system..to describe a facility with positive and constructive treatment objectives..quite the opposite of what..is designated..‘The Hole’, ‘The Shelf’, ‘Siberia’. 1974 Black Panther 9 Feb. 3/2 Prison officials claimed George Jackson and the six brothers killed two White guards and three White inmate-trustees while trying to escape from the prison's Adjustment Center. 1987 A. H. Vachss Strega xlviii. 145 They put me in the hole... Guys spend fucking years in the hole. Only they call it the ‘Adjustment Center’. |