sharpen

Other forms of sharpen

past tense

sharpenned·

present participle

sharpenning·

third person

sharpens·

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 sharpen

What does sharpen mean?

sharpen means "make sharp or sharper". That is the primary sense; the word has 8 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sharpen?

sharpen has 2 syllables: shar-pen. The stress falls on "shar". In IPA it is /ˈʃɑɹpən/.

What is another word for sharpen?

Close synonyms include focus, focalize, focalise, taper, point. 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 sharpen?

The recorded antonyms are dull, soften, flatten.

Is sharpen a common word?

sharpen 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.