| 释义 |
temperamental, a.|tɛmpərəˈmɛntəl|
[f. temperament n. + -al1.]
1. Of or relating to the temperament (chiefly in sense 7); constitutional.
1646Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. 18 By a temperamentall inactivity we are unready to put in execution the suggestions or dictates of reason. 1650Charleton Paradoxes 139 The constitution or temperamentall disposition of the organ. 1812Coleridge in Lit. Rem. (1836) I. 381 These temperamental pro-virtues will too often fail. 1824New Monthly Mag. XI. 321 In spite of her temperamental gaiety..she had moments of intense melancholy. 1907H. Wales The Yoke i, People there are who appear to have been given a special temperamental adaptation for an ascetic and abstinent life.
2. Of a person: liable to peculiar moods, having or giving way to an erratic or neurotic temperament. Hence, of a thing: behaving erratically or unpredictably.
1907Amer. Mag. LXIII. 355/2 The Celtic race is above all things temperamental. 1923E. Wallace Clue of New Pin xxix. 255 Tab decided that she was a little temperamental, and loved her for it. 1939F. Thompson Lark Rise iii. 42 A temperamental person was said to be ‘one o' them as is either up on the roof or down the well’. 1962Amer. N. & Q. I. 31/1 The horse was particularly suitable in northern Europe where the temperamental climate often made rapid ploughing and planting important. 1965Wireless World Sept. 436/1 He [sc. Dr. W. H. Eccles] also started a study of the coherer, the only detector of the period, which led to a better understanding of the action of that temperamental device. 1977M. Drabble Ice Age i. 79 The central heating worked, and he had boosted it with an electric fire, albeit a temperamental electric fire, which needed the occasional kick.
Hence ˌtemperaˈmentalist, a temperamental person. rare.
1924Blackw. Mag. June 786/1, I was what you might call a temperamentalist, and very easily hypnotised. |