temperate

Borrowed from Latin temperatus, past participle of temperare (“moderate, forbear, combine properly”). See temper. Displaced native Old English ġemetegod.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛmpəɹət/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: temp‧pe‧rate

temperate (comparative more temperate, superlative most temperate)

1. Moderate; not excessive.

   temperate heat

   He has a temperate demeanour ― He is a calm person.

   • c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     She is not hot, but temperate as the morn.

   • 1855, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page)”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:

     That sober freedom out of which there springs Our loyal passion for our temperate kings.

   • 1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 19:

     "Even in his most temperate moments he is constantly felling people with a hunting-crop."

   1. Specifically, moderate in temperature.

      These trees can only grow in temperate climates.

      • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii:

        Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.

   2. Moderate in the indulgence of the natural appetites or passions

      temperate in eating and drinking.

      • August 9, 1768, Benjamin Franklin, To John Alleyne, Esq. On Early Marriages

        Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy.

      • 1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC, pages 14–15:

        I am a temperate man and have made it a rule not to drink before luncheon. But I was so much ashamed of my first feeling about Gorman that I thought it well to break my rule. […] I gave my vote for whisky and soda as the more thorough-going drink of the two. A cocktail is seldom more than a mouthful.

2. Proceeding from temperance.
   • 1733–1737, Alexander Pope, [Imitations of Horace], London: […] R[obert] Dodsley [et al.]:

     The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

3. Dependent on life in a temperate climate.

   temperate fishes

• (moderate): See also Thesaurus:moderate
• (moderate in the indulgence of the natural appetites or passions): See also Thesaurus:temperate and Thesaurus:sober

• (geology) temperate zone, that part of the earth which lies between either tropic and the corresponding polar circle; -- so called because the heat is less than in the torrid zone, and the cold less than in the frigid zones.
• temperate rainforest

• temper
• temperature

temperate (third-person singular simple present temperates, present participle temperating, simple past and past participle temperated)

1. (obsolete) To render temperate; to moderate

   Synonyms: soften, temper

   • 1613, John Marston, The Insatiate Countess:

     It inflames temperance, and temp'rates wrath.

• “temperate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• petameter, petametre

temperate

1. inflection of temperare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

temperate f pl

1. feminine plural of temperato

temperāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of temperō

• “temperate”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “temperate”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers

temperate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of temperar combined with te