Concupiscence itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body. If you would know why one man is proud, another cruel, another intemperate or luxurious, you are not to repair so much to Aristotle’s ethics, or to the writings of other moralists, as to those of Galen, or of some anatomists, to find the reason of these different tempers.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. ii. p. 5.
Temperament. The Latin ‘temperamentum’ had sometimes very nearly the sense of our English ‘compromise’ or the French ‘transaction,’ and signified, as these do, a middle term reached by mutual concession, by a tempering of the extreme claims upon either side. This same use of ‘temperament’ appears from time to time in such of our writers as have allowed their style to be modified by their Latin studies.
Safest, therefore, to me it seems that none of the Council be moved unless by death, or just conviction of some crime. However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side.—Milton, The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had a notion that it [Observations on the Minority] should meet the public eye.—Burke, Letter to Lawrence.
Termagant. A name at this present applied only to women of fierce temper and ungoverned tongue, but formerly to men and women alike; and indeed predominantly to men; ‘Termagant’ in the popular notion being the name of one of the three gods of the Saracens. [See Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English (s. v. ‘Tervagant’).]
Art thou so fierce, currish, and churlish a Nabal, that even when thou mightest live in the midst of thy people (as she told Elisha [2 Kings iv. 13]), thou delightest to play the tyrant and termagant among them?—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 270.
This would make a saint swear like a soldier, and a soldier like Termagant.—Beaumont and Fletcher, King or No King.
Thews. It is a remarkable evidence of the influence of Shakespeare upon the English language, that while, so far as yet has been observed, every other writer, one single instance excepted, employs ‘thews’ in the sense of manners, qualities of mind and disposition, his employment of it in the sense of nerves, muscular vigour, has quite overborne the other; which, once so familiar in our literature, has now quite passed away. See a valuable note in Craik’s English of Shakespeare, p. 117.
To alle gode thewes born was she;
As lyked to the goddes, or she was born,