anneal

Syllables: an·neal/əˈniːl/

anneal verb: to subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen. Also the alternative form of anele.

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Verb

anneal (third-person singular simple present anneals, present participle annealing, simple past and past participle annealed)

To subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen.
- The best tough soft iron, such as will weld round, is drawn into rods by smiths, using charcoal fires, and taking welding heats every time, the rod is about 1.4 inch diameter, 9 or 10 feet long, containing 4lbs. each, tapered at each end to a long point; they are first anealed by being brought to a...1812 March 7, O. E., “The Process of Making Iron Wire”, in H[ezekiah] Niles, editor, The Weekly Register, volume II, number 27, Baltimore, Md.: Printed and published by the editor, at the Franklin...
- On closer inspection it appeared that steel annealed at 100° is, cæteris paribus, more easily soluble than glass hard steel; steel annealed at 200° more easily soluble than steel annealed at 100°, and steel annealed at 360° more easily soluble than steel annealed at 200°. […] These curious results...1887, C. Barus, V[incenc] Strouhal, “The Effect of Sudden Cooling Exhibited by Glass and by Steel, Considered both Physically and Chemically”, in Report of Work Done in the Division of Chemistry and...
To cool glass slowly, to minimize internal stress.
(archaic) To burn colors onto a glass or other surface.
- It was customary to beautify the Prow with Gold, and various ſorts of Paint and Colours: […] Several other Colours were alſo made uſe of, nor were they barely varniſh'd over with them, but very often anneal'd by Wax melted in the Fire, ſo as neither the Sun, Winds, or Water were able to deface them.1706, John Potter, “Of the Parts, Ornaments, &c. of Ships”, in Archæologia Græca: Or, The Antiquities of Greece, 2nd augmented and improved edition, volume II (Containing I. The Military Affairs of...
- Such were the features of her heavenly Face, / Her limbs were form'd with ſuch harmonious grace: / So faultleſs was the frame, as if the whole / Had been an emanation of the ſoul; / Which her own inward ſymmetry reveal'd; / And like a picture ſhone, in glaſs anneal'd.1793, John Dryden, “XII. On the Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady, who Died at Bath, and is there Interred”, in The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Esq. … To which is Prefixed the Life of the Author (A...
(ambitransitive) To make a double-stranded nucleic acid by pairing a single strand with a complementary strand.
- The 5′ junction is checked using a target gene-specific primer of ~21 nucleotides, which anneals upstream of the cassette integration site, together with a primer which anneals downstream of the first loxP site in the PCR cassette.2007, Celine I. Maeder, Peter Maier, Michael Knop, “A Guided Tour to PCR-based Genomic Manipulations of S. Cerevisiae (PCR-targeting)”, in Ian Stansfield, Michael J. R. Stark, editors, Yeast Gene...
(archaic, figuratively, poetic) To strengthen or harden.
- The experience annealed them, strengthening their resolve.
Synonyms:

indurate

Noun

anneal (plural anneals)

An act of annealing.
- Additional information obtained from counting krypton-85 released during the anneals shows that only fractions of a per cent of the theoretical amount of gas are released […]1958 October 3, William V. Johnston, The Effect of Transients and Longer-time Anneals on Irradiated Uranium-zirconium Alloys (AEC Research and Development Report; KAPL; 1965), Schenectady, N.Y....
- In contrast, our work showed that the 100% hydrogen anneal (1160°C for 45 min) led to a defect-free, atomically smooth surface. It should be noted that a high temperature anneal in Ar, H₂, or high vacuum is a well established pre-epitaxial growth step by which a native oxide film is removed to...1994, D. M. Lee, D. Ruprecht, D. Hymes, W. Huber, “Surface Characterization of Heat Treated Silicon Wafers”, in H[oward] R. Huff, W. Bergholz, K[ōji] Sumino, editors, Semiconductor Silicon/1994...

Also used as

anneal is also the alternative form of anele.

Examples of anneal in a sentence

The isolated disordered regions and the amorphous layer have widely different anneal behavior.1970, James W[alter] Mayer, Lennart Eriksson, John A[rthur] Davies, “General Features of Ion Implantation”, in Ion Implantation in...
I felt his strong bones anneal themselves to my own, his blood vent its bright tide into my veins, the semen of his testicles foam as it dashed in a torrent against mine.1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 30:
A properly made, fully sintered and fully annealed metal clay piece should be able to stand up to any traditional metalsmithing technique.2010, Kate McKinnon, Sculptural Metal Clay Jewelry: Techniques and Explorations, Loveland, Colo.: Interweave Press, →ISBN, page 27:
In contrast, our work showed that the 100% hydrogen anneal (1160°C for 45 min) led to a defect-free, atomically smooth surface.1994, D. M. Lee, D. Ruprecht, D. Hymes, W. Huber, “Surface Characterization of Heat Treated Silicon Wafers”, in H[oward] R. Huff, W....

All 11 example sentences with anneal

Synonyms of anneal

Forms of anneal

Verb
third-person singular present	anneals
present participle	annealing
past participle	annealed
past	annealed
alternative form	aneal
Noun
plural	anneals

Origin of anneal

From Middle English anelen, onelen, from Old English onǣlan (“to burn, ignite, set fire to, consume, heat, enlighten, incite, inflame, inspire, kindle”), from Proto-Germanic *ana (“on”) + Proto-Germanic *ailijaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ- (“to burn”). The double-N spelling may have arisen by analogy with Latinate verbs like announce, annex, and annul. The word is related to Old English onāl (“that which is burnt, burning; incense”), Old English āl (“fire, burning”), Icelandic eldur (“fire”), Swedish eld (“fire, flame”), Danish ild (“fire”).

Words formed from anneal

Words that rhyme with anneal

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about anneal

What does anneal mean?: Anneal means to subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen.
How do you use anneal in a sentence?: The isolated disordered regions and the amorphous layer have widely different anneal behavior.
What part of speech is anneal?: Anneal can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce anneal?: Anneal is pronounced /əˈniːl/.
What is the past tense of anneal?: The past tense of anneal is annealed.

Words near anneal in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: anneal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-anneal.ogg.

Cite this entry: “anneal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anneal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.