Word.ws English Dictionary

bleaken

bleaken verb: to become bleak.

Verb

bleaken (third-person singular simple present bleakens, present participle bleakening, simple past and past participle bleakened)

  1. (intransitive) To become bleak
    • The imagination tends to bleaken in adult life, and rigid categories may reduce perceptual sensitivity. The sense of wonder is diminished and gratitude for experience itself may fail.1997, Murray Cox, Alice Theilgaard, Mutative Metaphors in Psychotherapy: The Aeolian Mode, page 133
    • The fact of the phrase caused the sky to bleaken and his skin to itch, and by Monday night, when he was unable to sleep, Amos despised his own sensibilities and also despised the world.2003, Haven Kimmel, The Solace of Leaving Early, page 17

Forms of bleaken

third-person singular presentbleakens
present participlebleakening
past participlebleakened
pastbleakened

Origin of bleaken

From bleak + -en.

Questions about bleaken

What does bleaken mean?
Bleaken means to become bleak.
What part of speech is bleaken?
Bleaken is a verb.
What is the past tense of bleaken?
The past tense of bleaken is bleakened.

Words near bleaken in the dictionary

  1. blead
  2. bleading edge
  3. Bleadon
  4. bleah
  5. bleak
  6. bleaken
  7. bleakened
  8. bleakening
  9. bleakens
  10. bleaker
  11. bleakest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bleaken (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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