tempered

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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.

tempered (not comparable)

1. (in combination) Having a specified disposition or temper.

   even-tempered

   • 1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields:

     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.

2. Pertaining to the metallurgical process for finishing metals.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter ?”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     "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!"

3. Pertaining to the industrial process for toughening glass, or to such toughened glass.
4. Moderated or balanced by other considerations.
   • 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: J Johnson, , published 1792, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in The History of Pendennis. , volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     [N]obody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture.

5. (music) 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.

• See also Thesaurus:moderate

• untempered

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.

tempered

1. simple past and past participle of temper

• detrempe, détrempe