Search Result for "annealing": 
Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

1. hardening something by heat treatment;
[syn: annealing, tempering]


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Anneal \An*neal"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Annealed; p. pr. & vb. n. Annealing.] [OE. anelen to heat, burn, AS. an?lan; an on + ?lan to burn; also OE. anelen to enamel, prob. influenced by OF. neeler, nieler, to put a black enamel on gold or silver, F. nieller, fr. LL. nigellare to blacken, fr. L. nigellus blackish, dim. of niger black. Cf. Niello, Negro.] 1. To subject to great heat, and then cool slowly, as glass, cast iron, steel, or other metal, for the purpose of rendering it less brittle; to temper; to toughen. [1913 Webster] 2. To heat, as glass, tiles, or earthenware, in order to fix the colors laid on them. [1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Annealing \An*neal"ing\, n. 1. The process used to render glass, iron, etc., less brittle, performed by allowing them to cool very gradually from a high heat. [1913 Webster] 2. The burning of metallic colors into glass, earthenware, etc. [1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

annealing n 1: hardening something by heat treatment [syn: annealing, tempering]
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

simulated annealing annealing A technique which can be applied to any minimisation or learning process based on successive update steps (either random or deterministic) where the update step length is proportional to an arbitrarily set parameter which can play the role of a temperature. Then, in analogy with the annealing of metals, the temperature is made high in the early stages of the process for faster minimisation or learning, then is reduced for greater stability.