Word.ws English Dictionary

forlighten

forlighten verb: to decrease; reduce; diminish; lighten; lighten up.

Verb

forlighten (third-person singular simple present forlightens, present participle forlightening, simple past and past participle forlightened)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To decrease; reduce; diminish; lighten; lighten up.
    • For to forlighten with his sheen / Those sitting sad, in darkest blindness, / In death's cold shade.1892, William Shepard Walsh, Handy-book of literary curiosities

Forms of forlighten

third-person singular presentforlightens
present participleforlightening
past participleforlightened
pastforlightened

Origin of forlighten

From for- + lighten, but also continuing (in altered form) earlier forlyten (“to diminish”), from for- + lite + -en.

Questions about forlighten

What does forlighten mean?
Forlighten means to decrease; reduce; diminish; lighten; lighten up.
What part of speech is forlighten?
Forlighten is a verb.
What is the past tense of forlighten?
The past tense of forlighten is forlightened.

Words near forlighten in the dictionary

  1. forlet
  2. forlets
  3. forletting
  4. Forli
  5. forlie
  6. forlighten
  7. forlightens
  8. Forlivian
  9. Forlivians
  10. forlong
  11. forlonged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forlighten (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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Cite this entry: “forlighten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/forlighten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.