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to sweeten

to sweeten

25 3.0
Make food taste sweeter by adding sugar or make an offer more attractive
  • verb
  • /ˈswitən/
translation icon : endulzar
  • You can sweeten your tea by adding honey or sugar.
  • sweetened beverages
  • sweetened drinks
  • sweetened tea

It's been used to sweeten teas in medicine for thousands of years.

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Examples

  • Not only is he still interested, he's sweetening his offer.

  • One thing that we did to sweeten this is we use monk fruit instead of sugar, right?

  • All right, listen, did anything happen with the the suggestions around this, the how to sweeten your coffee?

  • It's been used to sweeten teas in medicine for thousands of years.

  • I sweetened it for ya.

  • Most of them are locals who make their living selling sweetened tea that is served with sugar cakes.

    Academic text (2005)
  • Officials in some of these communities are sweetening the offer with rebates on local taxes.

    Academic text (2004)
  • So I know it's very common to use apples and pears to sweeten up curries.

  • Children went by themselves to these tea shacks and brought sweetened tea in old empty bottles to everyone back at home.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Ayshatu prepared a hefty brew of Chinese gunpowder tea, heavily sweetened and served in shot glasses from a tiny teapot.

    Academic text (1992)

Synonyms

to sugar
vsto sweeten
3 1.0

To add a sweet white substance from plants to food or drink to make it sweet

also covers making situations or offers more pleasant
to honey
vsto sweeten
1 4.4

To put the sweet liquid bees make on food to make it sweeter

also applies to making offers or situations more pleasant
to edulcorate
vsto sweeten
  • Formal
9.9

To make something taste sweeter

also applies to making offers or situations more pleasant
to dulcorate
vsto sweeten
  • Archaic
9.9

To make food or drink taste sweeter

also applies to making offers or situations more pleasant
to dulcify
vsto sweeten
9.9

To make food or drink taste sweeter

also applies to making offers or situations more pleasant
to saccharify
vsto sweeten
  • Specialized
9.9

To change plant starch and other plant parts into sugar using enzymes or chemicals

is the general act of making taste sweeter by adding a sweet ingredient

Antonyms

12 3.4

Become bad in taste or become upset

Idioms

1 6.2

Make an unpleasant thing seem easier to accept by adding something pleasant

How Pleasant

to transform
523 3.4
to improve
1.0
to enhance
424 4.0
to sweeten
25 3.0
to tweak
81 3.8

Surface Forms

sweeten infinitive
sweetened past
sweetened past participle
sweetening present participle
sweetens third person singular

Morphology

sweeten = sweet (transparent) = sweet + en

The verb 'sweeten' is transparently derived from the adjective 'sweet' with the suffix '-en' indicating the process of making something sweet.

Etymology

Sweeten comes from the simple word sweet ('pleasant to taste') and the ending -en ('make'), so to sweeten food is to add sugar and to sweeten an offer is to make it more pleasant.