Definition of "distribution"
noun
countable and uncountable, plural distributions
Anything distributed; portion; share.
Quotations
our charitable distributions
December 6, 1709, Francis Atterbury, a sermon preach'd before the sons of the clergy at their anniversary-meeting in the Church of St. Paul
(rhetoric) A rhetorical technique in which a subject is divided into multiple cases based on some property or properties, and each case is addressed individually.
Quotations
It is alſo called a diſtribucion, when we diuide the whole, into ſeuerall partes, and ſaie we haue foure poynctes, whereof we purpoſe to ſpeake, compꝛehendyng our whole talke within compaſſe of theſame.
1553, Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (1962), book iii, folio 99, page 209 s.v. “Diſtribucion”