tighten

1. 1.

   make tight or tighter

   “Tighten the wire”

   Synonymsfasten

   Broaderchange

   Narrowerfraptautenscrewwind
2. 2.

   become tight or tighter

   “The rope tightened”

   Broaderchange

   Narrowerconstricttautencompressstrain
3. 3.

   severely restrict in scope or extent

   “tighten the rules”

   “stiffen the regulations”

   Synonymsstiffentighten upconstrain

   Broaderrestrict
4. 4.

   narrow or limit

   “reduce the influx of foreigners”

   Synonymsreduce

   Broaderrestrict

Other forms of tighten

past tense

tightenned·

present participle

tightenning·

third person

tightens·

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 tighten

What does tighten mean?

tighten means "make tight or tighter". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in tighten?

tighten has 2 syllables: tigh-ten. The stress falls on "tigh". In IPA it is /ˈtaɪtən/.

What is another word for tighten?

Close synonyms include fasten, stiffen, tighten up, constrain, reduce. 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 tighten a common word?

tighten 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 tighten?

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