temperature — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A measure of cold or heat, often measurable with a thermometer.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   The boiling temperature of pure water is 100 degrees Celsius.

   The temperature in the room dropped nearly 20 degrees; it went from hot to cold.

   More examples (3)

   The most accurate way to take your temperature is by sticking a thermometer up your butt.

   Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.

   The opposite issue emerges in the summer when students face scorching temperatures with unreliable or nonexistent air conditioning.

2. An elevated body temperature, as present in many illnesses; fever.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   You have a temperature. I think you should stay home today. You’re sick.

   "Aren't you feeling so well this morning?" she asked him anxiously. "Do you think you've got a temperature?"

3. A property of macroscopic amounts of matter that serves to gauge the average intensity of the random actual motions of the individually mobile particulate constituents.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   In consequence, macroscopic amounts of matter in thermal contact with one another tend to be at the same temperature, a fact of sufficient fundamental importance to merit belated designation as the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.

4. A parameter that controls the degree of randomness of the output.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

5. The general mood.

   Usage

   • Colloquial
   • Countable
   • Figurative
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   But it is both easier and more accurate to take the industry's true temperature at small private gatherings like a conference organized by the Ziff Davis publishing company in northern California last week.

   [Stephen] Miller's words did not seem designed to lower the temperature.

6. The state or condition of being tempered or moderated.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Obsolete
   • Uncountable

7. The balance of humours in the body, or one's character or outlook as considered determined from this; temperament.

   Usage

   • Archaic
   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   Our intemperence it is that pulls so many several incurable diseases on our heads, that hastens old age, perverts our temperature, and brings upon us sudden death.

   […]that not only the production of a rational Being was concern'd in it, but that possibly the happy foundation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind […]

   Only a strong dose of love will cure / A woman with an angry temperature.

Noun

1. the degree of hotness or coldness of a body or environment (corresponding to its molecular activity)

   Broader terms

   fundamental quantityfundamental measurephysical property

2. the somatic sensation of cold or heat

   Broader terms

   somesthesiasomaesthesiasomatesthesiasomatic sensation