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

to darken

38 3.3
Make or become less bright, for example a room
  • verb
  • /ˈdɑrkən/
: 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.

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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 dim
vsto darken
45 2.4

To become less bright or make a light weaker

also covers changing color or mood, not only lowering brightness
to blacken
vsto darken
16 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 blacken out
vsto darken
1 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
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

Antonyms

to brighten
71 2.7

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

to lighten
11 2.3

To make a place or color look brighter

Idioms

to darken someone's door
  • Informal
1 9.2

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

to darken a church door
  • Informal
9.9

To enter a church reluctantly because you feel ashamed or guilty

How Dark

to blacken
16 3.4
to darken
38 3.3
to dim
45 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.