tempérer

From Old French temprer; the é was added to make it more closely match the Latin spelling temperō, temperāre. This form may also be seen as a learned borrowing from the Latin word (according to the TLFi), and used in the sense of "temper", "sooth" as opposed to the sense relating to soaking or drenching (cf. the popularly evolved form tremper).

tempérer

1. to temper, to soothe, to assuage

This verb is conjugated like céder. It is a regular -er verb, except that its last stem vowel alternates between /e/ (written ‘é’) and /ɛ/ (written ‘è’), with the latter being used before mute ‘e’. One special case is the future stem, used in the future and the conditional. Before 1990, the future stem of such verbs was written tempérer-, reflecting the historic pronunciation /e/. In 1990, the French Academy recommended that it be written tempèrer-, reflecting the now common pronunciation /ɛ/, thereby making this distinction consistent throughout the conjugation (and also matching in this regard the conjugations of verbs like lever and jeter). Both spellings are in use today, and both are therefore given here.

• tempérament
• tempérance

• “tempérer” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• empêtrer