temperament
/ˈtɛm.pə.ɹə.mənt/
temperament means A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting. It carries an Arena rating of 1680, earned across 11 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, temperament ranks #389 of 17,123 for Most Malleable Words, #4,641 of 17,113 for Most Elegant Words, #4,814 of 17,118 for Most Ponderous Words, #7,690 of 17,130 for Most Ingenious Words.
temperament is pronounced /ˈtɛm.pə.ɹə.mənt/.
Why “temperament” is a great word
The characteristic or natural disposition that governs a person's foundational emotional reactivity and behavioral tendencies. From the Latin temperāmentum ("proper mixture, due measure"), from temperāre ("to mix properly, regulate"). Unlike "personality," the ornate superstructure of learned character, or "mood," a transient weather of feeling, temperament is the enduring native soil from which both grow. It is the infant's startled cry, the child's quiet rebuilding of the tower after its tenth collapse, the adult's innate preference for solitude—the original alloy from which all later temperings proceed, a signature written in the nervous system long before the self begins its conscious composition.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English temperament, borrowed from Middle French tempérament, from Latin temperāmentum.
noun
- A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting.e.g.“President Taft did not have the temperament either to dominate or to work with his Congress.”
- A tendency to become irritable or angry.
- The altering of certain intervals from their correct values in order to improve the moving from key to key.
- Individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
- A moderate and proportionable mixture of elements or ingredients in a compound; the condition in which elements are mixed in their proper proportions.
- Any state or condition as determined by the proportion of its ingredients or the manner in which they are mixed; consistence, composition; mixture.
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.