Word.ws English Dictionary

sightening

sightening is the present participle and gerund of sighten.

Meaning of sighten

Verb

sighten (third-person singular simple present sightens, present participle sightening, simple past and past participle sightened)

  1. (transitive, calico-printing) To add a fugitive colour to (a paste), to enable the printer to determine whether the figures are well-printed or not.
    • The iron liquor should be sightened with logwood.1830, Samuel Frederick Gray, The Chemistry of the Arts

Noun

sightening (plural sightenings)

  1. A colour used temporarily to enable a calico-printer to judge the pattern.

Forms of sightening

pluralsightenings

Origin of sightening

From sighten + -ing.

Questions about sightening

What does sightening mean?
Sightening means a colour used temporarily to enable a calico-printer to judge the pattern.
What is sightening the present participle and gerund of?
Sightening is the present participle and gerund of sighten.
What part of speech is sightening?
Sightening is a noun.
What is the plural of sightening?
The plural of sightening is sightenings.

Words near sightening in the dictionary

  1. sighted
  2. sighted in
  3. sightedness
  4. sighten
  5. sightened
  6. sightening
  7. sightenings
  8. sightens
  9. sighter
  10. sighters
  11. sightful

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sightening (page history and authors); sighten (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: “sightening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sightening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.