thickening

1. 1.

   accumulating and becoming more intense

   “the deepening gloom”

   “felt a deepening love”

   “the thickening dusk”

   Synonymsdeepening

   Similarintensifying
2. 2.

   becoming more intricate or complex

   “a thickening plot”

   Similarcomplex

Other forms of thickening

plural

thickenings·

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 thickening

What does thickening mean?

thickening means "any material used to thicken". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in thickening?

thickening has 3 syllables: thic-ke-ning. The stress falls on "thic". In IPA it is /ˈθɪkənɪŋ/.

What is another word for thickening?

Close synonyms include thickener, node, knob, inspissation, deepening. 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.

Is thickening a common word?

thickening is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.