tempered
adjective
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L341095 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
adj
Etymology: From Middle English tempred, itempered, ytempred, ytemprid, from Old English ġetemprod (“tempered, moderate, goverened, cured”), past participle of Old English ġetemprian (“to temper, moderate, govern, cure”), equivalent to temper + -ed.
- Having a specified disposition or temper.
“even-tempered”
“The Pyncheon Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale.”
- Pertaining to the metallurgical process for finishing metals.
“"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming — "Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the white whale most feels his accursed life!"”
- Pertaining to the industrial process for toughening glass, or to such toughened glass.
- Moderated or balanced by other considerations.
“The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in their season; but modesty, being the child of reason, cannot long exist with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection.”
“[N]obody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture.”
- Pertaining to the well-tempered scale, where the twelve notes per octave of the standard keyboard are tuned in such a way that it is possible to play music in any major or minor key and it will not sound perceptibly out of tune.
verb
Etymology: Partly from Middle English temperd, temprede, from Old English temprode, first and third person singular preterit of Old English temprian; and partly from Middle English tempred, i-tempred, from Old English ġetemprod. Equivalent to temper + -ed.
- simple past and past participle of temper