temperate

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛmpəɹət/

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• Hyphenation: temp‧pe‧rate

temperate (comparative more temperate, superlative most temperate)

1. Moderate; not excessive

   temperate heat

   a temperate climate.

   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare (c.1564–1616)

     She is not hot, but temperate as the morn.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Tennyson

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

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

   temperate in eating and drinking.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Benjamin Franklin

     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 5661828, 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.

3. Proceeding from temperance.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Alexander Pope

     The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

4. Living in an environment that is temperate, not extreme.

   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.

• 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, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• petameter, petametre

temperate

1. second-person plural present indicative of temperare
2. second-person plural imperative of temperare
3. feminine plural of temperato

temperāte

1. first-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