TEMPERAMENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Temperament

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/tˈɛmprəmənt/ /tˈɛmpərmənt/ Listen

Temperament

noun

Your usual mood. Synonym: disposition.

Excessive emotionalism or irritability and excitability (especially when displayed openly).

An adjustment of the intervals (as in tuning a keyboard instrument) so that the scale can be used to play in different keys.

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"Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books

... father was a man of melancholy temperament, the mother handsome and lively; and as Shakspeare used to put up at the house on his journeys between Stratford and London, Davenant is said to have affected the reputation of being Shakspeare's son. If he really did this, there was a levity, or rather a want of feeling, in the ...

— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... His susceptible temperament could not withstand the regal beauty of her proud attitude and indignant look. "O Rosa," said he, "there is no woman on earth to be compared with you. If you only knew how I idolize you at this moment, after all the cruel words you have uttered, you surely would relent. Why will ...

— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... promises; hope with the thing that the person promises. Faith is concerned with the past and present; hope with the future alone. Hope is invariably fixed on the future and is never to be regarded as merely a matter of natural temperament. It is specifically connected with the Lord's Coming, and we are thus reminded that the calling of God covers past, present, and future. It starts from regeneration and culminates in the resurrection of the body ...

— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas

... decisively turned the scale in the Revolutionary war; and his conciliatory yet resolute spirit was a main factor in the constitutional convention. This Pennsylvania anti-slavery society led the way to the early adoption by the State of gradual emancipation. Franklin, an optimist by temperament and by his large faith in mankind, looked confidently for the early end of slavery; as fast as men ripened into honesty and sense, he thought, they would recognize the folly ...

— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... writer of these speculations says to himself: "Let me, at all events, try to eliminate any bias, and see the whole thing as should an umpire—one of those pure beings in white coats, purged of all the prejudices, passions, and predilections of mankind. Let me have no temperament for the time being, for I have to set down—not what would be the effect on me if I were in their place, or what would happen to the future if I could have my way, but what would happen all the same if I ...

— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

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