tempered

4 definitions • 10 examples

limited or controlled, or made less extreme:

tempered by Her ambitions are tempered by the scale of the task.

tempered with Their love for each other was growing steadily, but the emotion was tempered with suspicion.

Pink is a tempered form of fierce, dramatic red.

(of a substance) changed by heat or a chemical process:

Tempered glass has a higher strength than standard glass.

The extreme cold turned tempered steel brittle.

tempered chocolate

with the differences between notes slightly changed so that they are in equal temperament (= have 12 parts of equal size in each octave):

The tempered scale, with the octave divided into 12 equal half-tones, is increasingly apparent from 1600 on.

In these tunings, the interval of the semitone is slightly smaller than the tempered semitone.

having or showing the stated type of temper:

even-tempered

bad-tempered