tempering
noun1
The act by which something is tempered.
- Caron has, in fact, discovered this very curious circumstance, that a bar of steel becomes shorter under successive temperings, while it increases in size, laterally, in such a manner, that there actually is an increase of volume.1872, Louis Emmanuel Gruner, The Manufacture of Steel, page 29:
2
Architecture A non-plastic material, such as sand, added to clay to prevent shrinkage and cracking during drying or firing; temper.
- Clay and tempering were packed around the pole together with plenty of water[.]1983, Barry Cunliffe, chapter 6, in Danebury Hillfort, Stroud: Tempus:
- Derived terms
- nontempering
- Coordinate terms
- annealing