/ɪnˈtɛmpərəns/
[noun] The habit of eating, drinking, or behaving in a way that is extreme and out of control, especially drinking too much alcohol. It describes a lack of self-control or moderation in any area of life.
Before it meant heavy drinking, 'intemperance' described any imbalance in the weather — stormy skies were once literally intemperate.
The story of 'intemperance' begins in ancient Rome, with the Latin word 'temperare', meaning to mix in the right amounts, to regulate, or to keep in proper proportion. The Romans used it not just for human behaviour but for blending substances — wine with water, metals in an alloy, even the mixing of hot and cold air. From 'temperare' came 'temperantia', the quality of keeping everything in its correct measure. This was considered one of the four cardinal virtues in classical philosophy, a concept championed by Cicero and later adopted by Christian thinkers. Its opposite, 'intemperantia' — formed by adding the prefix 'in-', meaning 'not' or 'without' — described a dangerous failure to keep things in balance.
The word passed into Old French as 'intemperance' and from there into Middle English during the 14th century, arriving in a culture already fascinated by ideas of balance and excess. Medieval thinkers, influenced by ancient medicine, believed the human body was governed by four 'humours' — fluids that needed to stay in perfect proportion for a person to be healthy. Intemperance threatened that balance directly, making it not just a moral failing but a medical danger. A doctor and a priest of the 1300s would have used the word with equal seriousness.
In its earliest English uses, 'intemperance' had a remarkably wide reach. It could describe violent weather — a storm was intemperate because the air itself had lost its proper balance. It could describe an intemperate climate, one that was too hot, too cold, or too wet. It could refer to excessive ambition, uncontrolled anger, or any passion that overstepped its natural limits. The word was essentially about proportion violated, whether in the atmosphere, the body, or the soul.
Over the following centuries, the word's meaning narrowed significantly. By the 17th and 18th centuries, 'intemperance' was increasingly used to describe one specific vice above all others: the excessive consumption of alcohol. This shift was partly social — drinking was a visible, widespread, and much-discussed problem in early modern Europe — and partly moral, as religious reformers focused their attention on taverns and drunkenness. The word became a favourite of preachers and moralists who wanted a single, weighty term to condemn what they saw as the root of poverty, crime, and spiritual ruin.
The 19th century cemented this association permanently. The great temperance movements of Britain and America, which campaigned for restrictions on alcohol and eventually for total prohibition, used 'intemperance' as their defining enemy. Organisations with names like the Society for the Suppression of Intemperance made the word almost synonymous with drinking alone. Ironically, by fighting intemperance so loudly, these movements also narrowed a word that had once described the full range of human excess — from rage to gluttony to ambition — down to a single, specific habit. Today, 'intemperance' still carries that weight, though it can still be used in its older, broader sense whenever a writer wants to describe any behaviour that has dangerously overstepped its proper limits.