sweeten
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Sweeten
Etymology
From sweet + -en. Eclipsed and superseded non-native Middle English doucen and endoucen, borrowed from Old French adoucir and endoucir (“to sweeten”).
Pronunciation
Verb
sweeten (third-person singular simple present sweetens, present participle sweetening, simple past and past participle sweetened)
- (transitive) To make sweet to the taste.
- to sweeten tea
- (transitive) To make (more) pleasant or to the mind or feelings.
- to sweeten life
- to sweeten friendship
- (transitive) To make mild or kind; to soften.
- to sweeten the temper
- (transitive) To make less painful or laborious; to relieve.
- to sweeten the cares of life
- 1827, [John Keble], “Last Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 99:
- Our God to bless out home delights, / And sweeten every secret tear:— [...]
- (transitive) To soften to the eye; to make delicate.
- 1695, John Dryden, De Arte Graphica:
- 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.
- (transitive) To make pure and healthful by destroying noxious matter.
- to sweeten rooms or apartments that have been infected
- to sweeten the air
- (transitive) To make warm and fertile.
- to dry and sweeten soils
- (agriculture, transitive) To raise the pH of (a soil) by adding alkali.
- 1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 128:
- [T]hey had prepared the garden carefully, plowing and sweetening the dirt with fireplace ashes and manure from the barn[.]
- (transitive) To restore to purity; to free from taint.
- to sweeten water, butter, or meat
- (transitive) To make more attractive; said of offers in negotiations.
- to sweeten the deal by increasing the price offered
- (intransitive) To become sweet.
- (music, transitive) To supplement (a composition) with additional instruments, especially strings.
- 2011, Russell Dean Vines, Composing Digital Music For Dummies, page 326:
- 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.
- 2014, Mellonee V. Burnim, Portia K. Maultsby, African American Music: An Introduction, page 259:
- Rather than employ strings to “sweeten” the songs, Motown's arrangements used strings as a timbral layer, in conjunction with syncopated horn lines, for a fuller sound; […]
Antonyms
- (antonym(s) of “to make warm and fertile”): sour
Derived terms
Translations
to make sweet to the taste
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to make more attractive; said of offers in negotiations
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