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BLACKEN
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I. (verb)
Verb forms
Present simple: I / you / we / they blacken ... he / she / it blackens
Past simple: blackened
Past participle: blackened
-ing form: blackening
Sense 1
Meaning:
Make or become black
Example:
The ceiling blackened
Synonyms:
black; blacken; melanise; melanize
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Hypernyms (to "blacken" is one way to...):
color; colour; discolor; discolour (change color, often in an undesired manner)
Sentence frames:
Something ----s
Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something
Antonym:
whiten (turn white)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Burn slightly and superficially so as to affect color
Example:
the flames scorched the ceiling
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Hypernyms (to "blacken" is one way to...):
burn (damage by burning with heat, fire, or radiation)
Domain category:
cookery; cooking; preparation (the act of preparing something (as food) by the application of heat)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "blacken"):
singe; swinge (burn superficially or lightly)
Sentence frames:
Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something
Context examples:
No wrathful Macedonia broke its surface nor blackened the sky with her smoke.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
It was one of the many curious fashions which have now died out, that men who were blasé from luxury and high living seemed to find a fresh piquancy in life by descending to the lowest resorts, so that the night-houses and gambling-dens in Covent Garden or the Haymarket often gathered illustrious company under their smoke-blackened ceilings.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Meg cheerfully blackened and burned her white hands cooking delicate messes for 'the dear', while Amy, a loyal slave of the ring, celebrated her return by giving away as many of her treasures as she could prevail on her sisters to accept.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word “Depposed.”
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
When I look back at my parents as they were in those days, it is at that very moment that I can picture them most clearly: her sweet face with the wet shining upon her cheeks, and his blue eyes upturned to the smoke-blackened ceiling.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But this time she kept away too long, and stayed beyond the half-hour; so she had not time to take off her fine dress, and threw her fur mantle over it, and in her haste did not blacken herself all over with soot, but left one of her fingers white.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
When I looked down at the trampers whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of face turned up, I felt as if the tinker's blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt again.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Blackened rocks and mounds of lava I had already seen everywhere peeping out from amid the luxuriant vegetation which draped them, but this asphalt pool in the jungle was the first sign that we had of actual existing activity on the slopes of the ancient crater.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In a very few minutes they were in full flight for their brushwood homes, leaving the morning sun to rise upon a blackened and blood-stained ruin, where it had left the night before the magnificent castle of the Seneschal of Auvergne.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
