temperature

plural temperatures

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

   The boiling temperature of pure water is 100 degrees Celsius.

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

   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.

   2013 May 11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8835, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2020, page 80

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

   2018 January 4, Janie Tankard Carnock, “Frigid Baltimore City schools: The racism we haven’t confronted”, in CNN

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

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

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

   1951, Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

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

   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.

   2000 September, Clinton D. Stoner, “Inquiries into the Nature of Free Energy and Entropy in Respect to Biochemical Thermodynamics”, in Entropy, volume 2, number 3, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 106–141

4. countableuncountablemachine learningA parameter that controls the degree of randomness of the output.
5. colloquialcountablefigurativelyuncountableThe general mood.

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

   2025 September 13, Edward Luce, “A descent into mutual loathing”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 7

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   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.

   2005 August 20, Seth Schiesel, “Taking the Temperature of the Creative Body”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

6. countableobsoleteuncountableThe state or condition of being tempered or moderated.
7. archaiccountableuncountableThe balance of humours in the body, or one's character or outlook as considered determined from this; temperament.

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

   1993, James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love, Book II

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   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.

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC

   […]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 […]

   1759–1767, [Laurence Sterne], The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume (please specify |volume=I to IX), London: […] T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, […]