Word.ws English Dictionary

coarsened

coarsened is the simple past and past participle of coarsen.

Meaning of coarsen

Verb

coarsen (third-person singular simple present coarsens, present participle coarsening, simple past and past participle coarsened)

  1. (transitive) To make (more) coarse.
    • She appeared to be neither wooden nor stationary, but a singing spirit, young and fresh, passing through the jungle. No violence coarsened her; no power domineered to wither her. She was graciously feminine.1941, Emily Carr, Klee Wyck, Chapter 6 "D'Sonoqua," http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100131h.html
  2. (intransitive) To become (more) coarse.
    • He was intolerable now except under the influence of liquor, and as he seemed to decay and coarsen under her eyes, Gloria's soul and body shrank away from him […]1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, (please specify |book=1, 2, or 3)

Words formed from coarsened

Questions about coarsened

What is coarsened the simple past and past participle of?
Coarsened is the simple past and past participle of coarsen.

Words near coarsened in the dictionary

  1. coarse-handed
  2. Coarsegold
  3. coarsehanded
  4. coarsely
  5. coarsen
  6. coarsened
  7. coarsener
  8. coarseners
  9. coarseness
  10. coarsenesses
  11. coarsening

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coarsened (page history and authors); coarsen (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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