temperament
noun
Simple meaning
A person's usual way of thinking, behaving or reacting.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tehmpruhmuhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɛmpɹəmənt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting.
A tendency to become irritable or angry.
psychology
Individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting.
Used this way, temperament is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The division of the scale based on an octave that is divided into twelve exactly equal semitones.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.