Short fuse, so to speak

Usage examples of temper.

Hengist, who boldly aspired to the conquest of Britain, exhorted his countrymen to embrace the glorious opportunity: he painted in lively colors the fertility of the soil, the wealth of the cities, the pusillanimous temper of the natives, and the convenient situation of a spacious solitary island, accessible on all sides to the Saxon fleets.

Of that great, tempering, benign shadow over the continent, tempering its heat, giving shelter from its cold, restraining the waters, there is left about 65 per cent in acreage and not more than one-half the merchantable timber--five hundred million acres gone in a century and a half.

Their adherence to the old system of Church discipline involved a reaction against the secularising process, which did not seem to be tempered by the spiritual powers of the bishops.

Notwithstanding these precautions, and his own example, the succession of consuls finally ceased in the thirteenth year of Justinian, whose despotic temper might be gratified by the silent extinction of a title which admonished the Romans of their ancient freedom.

And probably the empress herself might have seen less reason for her admonitions on the subject, had it not been for the circumstance, which was no doubt unfortunate, that the royal family at this time contained no member of a graver age and a settled respectability of character who might, by his example, have tempered the exuberance natural to the extreme youth of the sovereigns and their brothers.

An actual or latent aggressiveness on the part of any one nation inevitably provokes its neighbors into a defiant and suspicious temper.

Gavvmg held his temper and Horse took it with typical docility, but Alfin was still protesting as they broke through into sunlight.

Eye Begins to See: The Apocalyptic Temper in the 1980sWilliam Gaddis and Don DeLillo.

Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age.

It was more agreeable to his temper, as well as to his policy, to reign under the venerable names of ancient magistracy, and artfully to collect, in his own person, all the scattered rays of civil jurisdiction.

Yet there was one who made the Zulu people out of nothing, as a potter fashions a vessel from clay, as a smith fashions an assegai out of the ore of the hills, yes, and tempers it with human blood.

Pellinore had not only lost his temper but seemed to have been a bit astonied by the impact.

His own brusqueness, cynicism and temper predisposed him to atrabilious vodyanoi.

Only his eyes, the color of cold, tempered metal and the gold towers that linked him to Regis Aurum remained.

His prudence rendered him averse to any great innovation, and though his temper was not very susceptible of zeal or enthusiasm, he always maintained an habitual regard for the ancient deities of the empire.