Etymologically
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temperature

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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
  • 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