temperament
/ˈtɛm.pəɹ.ə.mənt/ noun C1- A person's usual manner of thinking, behaving or reacting.
- 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.
Plural temperaments
From the library
Rachel—who is a very good girl, but of an excitable Welsh temperament—had a sharp touch of brain-fever, and goes about the house now—or did until yesterday—like a black-eyed shadow of her former self.
The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one’s own character and ideals was very dear to me.
The bandit gazed on this scene with amazement; he was evidently accustomed to see his prisoners tremble before him, and yet here was one whose gay temperament was not for a moment altered; as for Franz, he was enchanted at the way in which Albert had sustained the national honor in the presence of the bandit.
“I inquired of you if poisons acted equally, and with the same effect, on men of the North as on men of the South; and you answered me that the cold and sluggish habits of the North did not present the same aptitude as the rich and energetic temperaments of the natives of the South.”
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