anneal
Meanings
verb
- To subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen.
- To cool glass slowly, to minimize internal stress.
- To burn colors onto a glass or other surface.
- To make a double-stranded nucleic acid by pairing a single strand with a complementary strand.
- To strengthen or harden.
noun
- An act of annealing.
verb
- Alternative form of anele (“anoint”).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English anelen, onelen, from Old English onǣlan (“to burn, ignite, set fire to, consume, heat, enlighten, incite, inflame, inspire, kindle”), from Proto-Germanic *ana (“on”) + Proto-Germanic *ailijaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ- (“to burn”). The double-N spelling may have arisen by analogy with Latinate verbs like announce, annex, and annul. The word is related to Old English onāl (“that which is burnt, burning; incense”), Old English āl (“fire, burning”), Icelandic eldur (“fire”), Swedish eld (“fire, flame”), Danish ild (“fire”).
Synonyms
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.