Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Dispersion

Dispersion , noun

[CF. French dispersion.]

1.
The act or process of scattering or dispersing, or the state of being scattered or separated; as, the Jews in their dispersion retained their rites and ceremonies; a great dispersion of the human family took place at the building of Babel.
The days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished. — Jer. xxv. 34
2.
(Optics) The separation of light into its different colored rays, arising from their different refrangibilities.
Collocations (1)
Dispersion of the optic axes (Crystallography) , the separation of the optic axes in biaxial crystals, due to the fact that the axial angle has different values for the different colors of the spectrum.