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temper

Pronunciation: /ˈtɛmpə/

The English word “temper” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A general tendency or orientation towards a certain type of mood, a volatile state; a habitual way of thinking, behaving or reacting.
  2. State of mind; mood.
  3. A tendency to become angry.
  4. Anger; a fit of anger.
  5. Calmness of mind; moderation; equanimity; composure.
  6. Constitution of body; the mixture or relative proportion of the four humours: blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy.
  7. Middle state or course; mean; medium.
  8. The state of any compound substance which results from the mixture of various ingredients; due mixture of different qualities.
  9. The heat treatment to which a metal or other material has been subjected; a material that has undergone a particular heat treatment.
  10. The state of a metal or other substance, especially as to its hardness, produced by some process of heating or cooling.
  11. Milk of lime, or other substance, employed in the process formerly used to clarify sugar.
  12. A non-plastic material, such as sand, added to clay to prevent shrinkage and cracking during drying or firing; tempering.

verb

  1. To moderate or control.
  2. To strengthen or toughen a material, especially metal, by heat treatment; anneal.
  3. To adjust the temperature of an ingredient (e.g. eggs or chocolate) gradually so that it remains smooth and pleasing.
  4. To sauté spices in ghee or oil to release essential oils for flavouring a dish in South Asian cuisine.
  5. To mix clay, plaster or mortar with water to obtain the proper consistency.
  6. To adjust, as the mathematical scale to the actual scale, or to that in actual use.
  7. To govern; to manage.
  8. To combine in due proportions; to constitute; to compose.

Etymology

From Middle English temperen, tempren, from Old English ġetemprian, temprian, borrowed from Latin temperō (“(transitive) to divide or proportion duly, to moderate, to regulate; (intransitive) to be moderate, temperate”), from tempus (“time, fit season”). Compare also French tempérer. Doublet of tamper. See temporal.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.