temperature

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈtem.prə.tʃə/, US /ˈtem.pɚ.ə.tʃɚ/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English temperature (“temperate weather”),^[2] borrowed from Latin temperātūra (“a tempering, moderation, due measure”),^[3][4] or French température,^[5][6] from temperātus, the past participle of temperāre (“to mix in due proportion, blend, regulate; to restrain oneself”),^[3][4][7] with the suffix -ūra (-ure).^[4][7] It is related to temper, temperate and temperament.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A tempered or temperate condition, as of the weather: about 1450 in Barnhart,^[4] and “the fact of being tempered, proper proportion” in the mid-15th century in Etymonline.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It first meant the state of being tempered or mixed, and later became a synonym for temperament, a combination of the bodily humours or a state of mind.^[8][5] In the 1530s it was the character of a substance as fixed by the four qualities, hot, cold, moist and dry,^[3][9] and “due measure, moderation” from 1536.^[9] The scientific sense, “degree of heat or cold”, is first recorded in Boyle's Of the Temperature in Submarine Regions (1670), from Latin temperatura, which Galileo had used in that sense.^[3][4] As the thermal element of weather it is by 1820,^[3] of the heat of a living body by 1876,^[3] and “a fever” by 1898.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – a temperate condition.^[4]
• 1533 – a mixture.^[9]
• 1530s – the nature of a substance.^[3][9]
• 1670 – degree of heat or cold.^[3][4]
• 1876 – body heat.^[3]
• 1898 – a fever.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The degree of heat or cold of a body or environment.
2. A particular degree of heat or cold as measured on a standard scale.
3. The degree of heat in the body of a living thing.
4. An abnormally high body temperature; a fever: running a temperature.
5. The general level of emotion or tension: the political temperature.

Word family

• distemperature
• humiture
• absolute temperature
• critical temperature
• room temperature
• standard temperature and pressure
• temperature-humidity index
• transition temperature

Related words

• temperature inversion
• temper
• temperate
• temperament
• tempering
• distemper

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press