lighten

Other forms of lighten

past tense

lightenned·

present participle

lightenning·

third person

lightens·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about lighten

What does lighten mean?

lighten means "make more cheerful". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in lighten?

lighten has 2 syllables: ligh-ten. The stress falls on "ligh". In IPA it is /ˈlaɪtən/.

What is another word for lighten?

Close synonyms include lighten up, buoy up, lighten up, buoy up, brighten. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of lighten?

The recorded antonyms are weigh down, darken.

Is lighten a common word?

lighten is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with lighten?

1 word rhymes with lighten. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.