English dictionary
temper
nounPronunciation
/ˈtɛmpə/
/ˈtɛmpɚ/
Audio pronunciation
Parts of speech
Definitions
noun
- A tendency to be in a certain type of mood; a habitual way of thinking, behaving or reacting.
- State of mind; mood.
- A tendency to become angry.
- Anger; a fit of anger.
- Calmness of mind; moderation; equanimity; composure.
- Constitution of body; the mixture or relative proportion of the four humours: blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy.
- Middle state or course; mean; medium.
- The state of any compound substance which results from the mixture of various ingredients; due mixture of different qualities.
- The heat treatment to which a metal or other material has been subjected; a material that has undergone a particular heat treatment.
- The state of a metal or other substance, especially as to its hardness, produced by some process of heating or cooling.
- (sugar manufacture) Milk of lime, or other substance, employed in the process formerly used to clarify sugar.
verb
- To moderate or control.
- To strengthen or toughen a material, especially metal, by heat treatment; anneal.
- To sauté spices in ghee or oil to release essential oils for flavouring a dish in South Asian cuisine.
- To mix clay, plaster or mortar with water to obtain the proper consistency.
- To adjust, as the mathematical scale to the actual scale, or to that in actual use.
- (Latinism) To govern; to manage.
- To combine in due proportions; to constitute; to compose.
- To mingle in due proportion; to prepare by combining; to modify, as by adding some new element; to qualify, as by an ingredient; hence, to soften; to mollify; to assuage.
- To fit together; to adjust; to accommodate.
Example sentences
to have a good, bad, or calm temper
He has quite a temper when dealing with salespeople.
an outburst of temper
to keep one's temper; to lose one's temper; to recover one's temper
the temper of mortar
the temper of iron or steel
Temper your language around children.
Tempering is a heat treatment technique applied to metals, alloys, and glass to achieve greater toughness by increasing the strength of materials and/or ductility. Tempering is performed by a controlled reheating of the work piece to a temperature below its lower eutectic critical temperature.