1 [VN] to reduce the amount of work, debt, worry, etc. that sb has:
equipment to lighten the load of domestic work * The measures will lighten the tax burden on small businesses.
2 to become or make sth become brighter or lighter in colour:
[V] The sky began to lighten in the east. * [VN] Use bleach to lighten the wood.
3 ~ (sth) (up) to feel or make sb feel less sad, worried or serious:
[V] My mood gradually lightened. * [VN] She told a joke to lighten the atmosphere.
4 [VN] to make sth lighter in weight
PHRASALVERBS
lighten up (spoken) used to tell sb to become less serious or worried about sth:
Come on, John. Lighten up!
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for lighten is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is lighten a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, lighten is tagged as verb.
Does lighten appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — lighten appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
