temperament
nounUK /ˈtɛm.pə.ɹə.mənt/ · US /ˈtɛm.pɚ.ə.mənt/
Etymology Inherited from Middle English temperament, borrowed from Middle French tempérament, from Latin temperāmentum.
A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting.
- President Taft did not have the temperament either to dominate or to work with his Congress.1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith, Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, →OL, page 13:
A tendency to become irritable or angry.
Entertainment, Lifestyle, Music The altering of certain intervals from their correct values in order to improve the moving from key to key.
Human sciences, Psychology, Sciences Individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
Obsolete A moderate and proportionable mixture of elements or ingredients in a compound; the condition in which elements are mixed in their proper proportions.
- If I will aske meere Philosophers, what the soule is, I shall finde amongst them, that will tell me, it is nothing, but the temperament and harmony, and just and equall composition of the Elements in the body, which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the soule […]1624, John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVIII., in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Charles M. Coffin, New York: Modern Library (1952), pp. 442-444
Obsolete Any state or condition as determined by the proportion of its ingredients or the manner in which they are mixed; consistence, composition; mixture.
- Derived terms
- artistic temperament, circular temperament, circulating temperament, equal temperament, good temperament, Helmholtz temperament, intemperament, judicial temperament, meantone temperament, miracle temperament, quasi-Pythagorean temperament, schismic temperament, temperamented, well temperament