Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌑 To make less bright ⚠️ To damage reputation
to darken

to darken

63 3.3
Make or become less bright, for example a room
  • verb
  • /ˈdɑrkən/
translation icon : oscurecer
  • The storm clouds darken the sky, making it feel like evening has come early.
  • a darkened room
  • a darkened sky
  • face darkened

So I'm going to take that color and with this, I'm just going to darken the cheekbone.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • His mood began to darken as he thought about the difficult conversation ahead.

  • The thick smoke from the fire started to darken the once bright room.

  • So I definitely think I can darken in here just a little bit.

  • I am just going to darken the outer corner

  • And I'm just going to darken my lower part of my eyes.

  • And then I will go back over to define the wing itself and darken it back up.

  • I'm going to go just on this outer corner right here and just kind of darken things up pretty.

  • So I'm going to take just a black shadow and just darken out these edges here.

  • I'm going to darken the outer third of my actual lid.

  • Then I'm going to darken things up again using this palette.

Synonyms

to blacken
vsto darken
19 3.4

To make something dark or to become dark, for example walls after a fire

is about making things less bright or gloomy rather than producing extreme color change
to dim
vsto darken
12 2.4

To become less bright or make a light weaker

also covers changing color or mood, not only lowering brightness
to bedim
vsto darken
9.9

To make something, like light and memory, less bright or clear

is about reducing light or brightness rather than focusing on clarity
to blacken out
vsto darken
6.0

To make a place or screen completely dark so no light shows

is used for general lessening of light or mood, not total light removal

Antonyms

to brighten
27 2.7

To make a place or thing look more cheerful by adding color

to lighten
16 2.3

To make a place or color look brighter

Idioms

to darken a church door
  • Informal
9.9

To enter a church reluctantly because you feel ashamed or guilty

to darken someone's door
  • Informal
9.2

To go to someone's home when they do not want you there

How Dark

to blacken
19 3.4
to darken
63 3.3
to dim
12 2.4

Surface Forms

darken infinitive
darkened past
darkened past participle
darkening present participle
darkens third person singular

Morphology

darken = dark (transparent) = dark + en

The verb is a regular derivation from the adjective 'dark' with the productive verbalizer '-en', meaning to make or become dark.

Etymology

Darken comes from the old English word dark which was 'deorc', plus the ending -en that means 'to make'. So to darken something is simply to 'make dark' or less bright, whether in light or in colour.