sharpening

sharpening is the present participle and gerund of sharpen.

Noun

sharpening (plural sharpenings)

The act by which something is sharpened.
- There are flourishes and coloratura passages in this art, heightenings and sharpenings of the line that serve only to give the needy linear system a value of its own in confrontation with nature.1970, Heinrich Wölfflin, Drawings of Albrecht Dürer, page 4
(in plural) The debris produced when a pencil is sharpened.

sharpen (third-person singular simple present sharpens, present participle sharpening, simple past and past participle sharpened)

(figuratively, sometimes, transitive) To make sharp.
- to sharpen a pencil or a knife or a musical note
(intransitive) To become sharp.
- The organizers said they had found themselves "more involved in the web of social convulsions and violence that is tormenting our country. The present economic crisis, the grave political instability and the rapidly sharpening violence have finally overtaken […] our wishes.1990 February 4, Jennie McKnight, “Peruvian Politics Threaten Encuentro”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 2

plural	sharpenings

What does sharpening mean?: Sharpening means the act by which something is sharpened.
What is sharpening the present participle and gerund of?: Sharpening is the present participle and gerund of sharpen.
What part of speech is sharpening?: Sharpening is a noun.
What is the plural of sharpening?: The plural of sharpening is sharpenings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: sharpening (page history and authors); sharpen (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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