weighten

weighten

English

Etymology

From weight +‎ -en.

Verb

weighten (third-person singular simple present weightens, present participle weightening, simple past and past participle weightened)

1. (transitive, literally) To add or give weight to; make heavy
   • 2001, Bernard Moitessier, Sailing to the Reefs, page 214:

     The idea of all this shifting was simply to weighten the bows, thereby lightening the stern, and so obtain the utmost hydrodynamic benefit.

2. (transitive, figuratively) To give support or importance to; make weighty
   • 1998, Sahin Albayrak, Intelligent Agents for Telecommunications Applications:

     In the case of a conflict it either prompts the user for more specific observations, weightens the reliability of the results in order to prefer the most likely one, or tums over the diagnosis task to the particular diagnoses expert agents again.

3. (transitive, by extension) To weigh down
   • 1880, Charles Octavius S. Morgan, Historical traditions and facts relating to Newport and Caerleon:

     Efforts were made to cheer the King, and rouse him from the depression with which his sorrows began to weighten him.

   • 2017, Dominic Dromgoole, Hamlet: Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play:

     That saturating hopelessness of the wholly corrupt state, the invisible but dense fog which weightens the movements of all within it, on this night, just before an election, with everyone turning out in a beautiful venue on a sunny evening, that hopelessness seemed imperceptibly to be lifting.

4. (intransitive) To become heavy
   • 1987, Brendan, Mary, Beloved avenger, page 29:

     Her lids weightened, slightly hooding violet eyes that mesmerically followed the teardrop trailings.