anneal

Definitions


[əˈniːl], (Verb)

Definitions:
- heat (metal or glass) and allow it to cool slowly, in order to remove internal stresses and make it easier to work
(e.g: copper tubes must be annealed after bending or they will be brittle)

- recombine (DNA) in the double-stranded form


Phrases:

Origin:
Old English onǣlan, from on + ǣlan ‘burn, bake’ from āl ‘fire, burning’. The original sense was ‘set on fire’, hence (in late Middle English) ‘subject to fire, alter by heating’




definition by Oxford Dictionaries