1 to become, or to make sth softer:
[V] Fry the onions until they soften. * [VN] a lotion to soften the skin * Linseed oil will soften stiff leather.
2 to become or to make sth less bright or harsh:
[VN] Trees soften the outline of the house. [also V]
3 to become or to make sb/sth more sympathetic and less severe or critical:
[V] She felt herself softening towards him. * His face softened as he looked at his son. * [VN] She softened her tone a little.
4 [VN] to reduce the force or the unpleasant effects of sth:
Air bags are designed to soften the impact of a car crash.
IDIOMS see BLOWn.
PHRASALVERBS
soften sb<->up (informal)
1 to try to persuade sb to do sth for you by being very nice to them before you ask them:
Potential customers are softened up with free gifts before the sales talk.
2 to make an enemy weaker and easier to attack
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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 soften is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is soften a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, soften is tagged as verb.
Does soften appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — soften 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.
