| Library / English Dictionary |
TEMPERED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Adjusted or attuned by adding a counterbalancing element
Example:
criticism tempered with kindly sympathy
Classified under:
Antonym:
untempered (not moderated or controlled)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Made hard or flexible or resilient especially by heat treatment
Example:
tempered glass
Synonyms:
hardened; tempered; toughened; treated
Classified under:
Similar:
curable (capable of being hardened by some additive or other agent)
sunbaked (baked or hardened by exposure to sunlight; not burned)
Antonym:
untempered (not brought to a proper consistency or hardness)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb temper
Context examples:
It was a task requiring the utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but admire the way he tempered his strength to the fineness and delicacy of the need.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
For she knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring disposition.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like—a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than once occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily put an end to by this prince’s grand-father, in a general composition; and the militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the strictest duty.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“I should take him, even on my slight acquaintance, to be an ill-tempered man.”
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not long- enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was the Beauty's sister.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
