When someone says "she's got a short temper," they usually mean that she gets frustrated or mad easily. This doesn't have to be a big deal - maybe someone cuts her off while driving, and suddenly she's honking the horn and yelling. But for others, having a bad temper is a more serious problem that can hurt people around them. Some people might try to calm down their temper by taking deep breaths or counting to ten before reacting. If you're with someone who has a bad temper, it can be hard to know how to deal with the situation - do you try to avoid getting on their nerves, or do you talk to them about why they get so upset?
How common is "temper"?
Word temper is considered uncommon in modern English. It has a balanced usage among all categories: speech, fiction, newspapers and academic texts.
Definitions
noun
A tendency to be in a certain type of mood; a habitual way of thinking, behaving or reacting.
Example: to have a good, bad, or calm temper
State of mind; mood.
A tendency to become angry.
Example: He has quite a temper when dealing with salespeople.
Anger; a fit of anger.
Example: an outburst of temper
Calmness of mind; moderation; equanimity; composure.
Example: to keep one's temper; to lose one's temper; to recover one's temper
Constitution of body; the mixture or relative proportion of the four humours: blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy.
Middle state or course; mean; medium.
The state of any compound substance which results from the mixture of various ingredients; due mixture of different qualities.
Example: the temper of mortar
The heat treatment to which a metal or other material has been subjected; a material that has undergone a particular heat treatment.
The state of a metal or other substance, especially as to its hardness, produced by some process of heating or cooling.
Example: the temper of iron or steel
(sugar manufacture) Milk of lime, or other substance, employed in the process formerly used to clarify sugar.
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ragedispositiontemperament
verb
To moderate or control.
Example: Temper your language around children.
To strengthen or toughen a material, especially metal, by heat treatment; anneal.
Example: Tempering is a heat treatment technique applied to metals, alloys, and glass to achieve greater toughness by increasing the strength of materials and/or ductility. Tempering is performed by a controlled reheating of the work piece to a temperature below its lower eutectic critical temperature.
To sauté spices in ghee or oil to release essential oils for flavouring a dish in South Asian cuisine.
To mix clay, plaster or mortar with water to obtain the proper consistency.
To adjust, as the mathematical scale to the actual scale, or to that in actual use.
(Latinism) To govern; to manage.
To combine in due proportions; to constitute; to compose.
To mingle in due proportion; to prepare by combining; to modify, as by adding some new element; to qualify, as by an ingredient; hence, to soften; to mollify; to assuage.
