Heaten
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To increase in heat; make or become hotter ambitransitive, figuratively
"In 1958, when the debate heatened, an elderly gentleman of excellent reputation stepped regally into a Senate hearing room in Washington prepared to testify against statehood for Alaska."
- 2 past participle of heat form-of, nonstandard, participle, past, rare
"The coincidence of the fact that Sensex crossing 20,000 level both in late 2007 and in 2010, and also both the years seeing the largest issues namely Reliance Power (in 2007) and Coal India (in 2010), has heaten up the discussion regarding the parallels."
Example
More examples"In 1958, when the debate heatened, an elderly gentleman of excellent reputation stepped regally into a Senate hearing room in Washington prepared to testify against statehood for Alaska."
Etymology
From heat + -en.
Probably formed on the analogy of beat:beat:beaten by speakers who use heat or het for the simple past of heat (“to make hot”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.