Sweeten

//ˈswiːtən// name, verb

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
Verb
  1. 1
    To make sweet to the taste. transitive

    "to sweeten tea"

  2. 2
    make sweeter, more pleasant, or more agreeable wordnet
  3. 3
    To make (more) pleasant or to the mind or feelings. transitive

    "to sweeten life"

  4. 4
    make sweeter in taste wordnet
  5. 5
    To make mild or kind; to soften. transitive

    "to sweeten the temper"

Show 9 more definitions
  1. 6
    To make less painful or laborious; to relieve. transitive

    "to sweeten the cares of life"

  2. 7
    To soften to the eye; to make delicate. transitive

    "Correggio has made his memory immortal by the strength he has given to his figures, and by sweetening his lights and shadows, and melting them into each other."

  3. 8
    To make pure and healthful by destroying noxious matter. transitive

    "to sweeten rooms or apartments that have been infected"

  4. 9
    To make warm and fertile. transitive

    "to dry and sweeten soils"

  5. 10
    To raise the pH of (a soil) by adding alkali. transitive

    "[T]hey had prepared the garden carefully, plowing and sweetening the dirt with fireplace ashes and manure from the barn[.]"

  6. 11
    To restore to purity; to free from taint. transitive

    "to sweeten water, butter, or meat"

  7. 12
    To make more attractive; said of offers in negotiations. transitive

    "to sweeten the deal by increasing the price offered"

  8. 13
    To become sweet. intransitive
  9. 14
    To supplement (a composition) with additional instruments, especially strings. transitive

    "In most popular music the bowed strings usually play long, sustained, sweeping parts, and are sometimes added to a vocal track later in a process known as sweetening."

Etymology

From sweet + -en. Eclipsed non-native Middle English doucen and endoucen, borrowed from Old French adoucir and endoucir (“to sweeten”).

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