anneal

Dec. 20th, 2017 07:56 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
anneal (uh-NEEL) - v., to subject (glass or steel) to heat and then slow cooling to toughen and reduce brittleness; (figurative) to toughen, to temper.


There's a number of technical senses I'm leaving out, most of them dealing with materials processing. The metallurgic sense dates to Middle English in the spelling anelen, originally meaning to set on fire, a sense that dates back to Old English onǣlan, which has at the root āl, fire.

---L.

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