anneal

verb

1. 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.

   “The best tough soft iron, such as will weld round, is drawn into rods by smiths, using charcoal fires, and taking welding heats every time, the rod is about 1.4 inch diameter, 9 or 10 feet long, containing 4lbs. each, tapered at each end to a long point; they are first anealed by being brought to a bright red heat, in a furnace excluding the air as much as possible, for if the air can be entirely excluded, no scab will rise in anealing; […]”

   “I felt his strong bones anneal themselves to my own, his blood vent its bright tide into my veins, the semen of his testicles foam as it dashed in a torrent against mine.”

   “A properly made, fully sintered and fully annealed metal clay piece should be able to stand up to any traditional metalsmithing technique.”

2. To cool glass slowly, to minimize internal stress.
3. (archaic)To burn colors onto a glass or other surface.

   “It was customary to beautify the Prow with Gold, and various ſorts of Paint and Colours: […] Several other Colours were alſo made uſe of, nor were they barely varniſh'd over with them, but very often anneal'd by Wax melted in the Fire, ſo as neither the Sun, Winds, or Water were able to deface them.”

   “Such were the features of her heavenly Face, / Her limbs were form'd with ſuch harmonious grace: / So faultleſs was the frame, as if the whole / Had been an emanation of the ſoul; / Which her own inward ſymmetry reveal'd; / And like a picture ſhone, in glaſs anneal'd.”

4. (ambitransitive)To make a double-stranded nucleic acid by pairing a single strand with a complementary strand.

   “The 5′ junction is checked using a target gene-specific primer of ~21 nucleotides, which anneals upstream of the cassette integration site, together with a primer which anneals downstream of the first loxP site in the PCR cassette.”

5. (archaic, figuratively, poetic)To strengthen or harden.

   “The experience annealed them, strengthening their resolve.”

6. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of anele (“anoint”).

   “MABEL: Is he to die, unshriven – unannealed?”

noun

1. An act of annealing.

   “Additional information obtained from counting krypton-85 released during the anneals shows that only fractions of a per cent of the theoretical amount of gas are released […]”

   “In contrast, our work showed that the 100% hydrogen anneal (1160°C for 45 min) led to a defect-free, atomically smooth surface. It should be noted that a high temperature anneal in Ar, H₂, or high vacuum is a well established pre-epitaxial growth step by which a native oxide film is removed to obtain a good quality epitaxial layer[…].”

   “In the two-step anneal, the low temperature (nucleation) anneal was conducted at 450°C, 650°C, 750°C, or 850°C for various times. Following the low temperature anneal, the samples were heat treated at 1000°C for a total cumulative anneal time of 40 h. All anneals were carried out in a dry nitrogen ambient environment.”