tempered

Adjective

tempered (not comparable)

1. (in-compounds) Having a specified disposition or temper.
   • even-tempered
   • 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.1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC
2. Pertaining to the metallurgical process for finishing metals.
   • "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...1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “'”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
3. Pertaining to the industrial process for toughening glass, or to such toughened glass.
4. Moderated or balanced by other considerations.
   • 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.1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC
   • [N]obody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture.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...

   Synonyms:

   mellow, sober, measured, middle of the road, mild, moderate, nonexcessive, nonextreme, nonfanatic, proper

5. 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.