slackening

slackening is the present participle and gerund of slacken.

Meaning of slacken

slacken (third-person singular simple present slackens, present participle slackening, simple past and past participle slackened)

(intransitive) To gradually decrease in intensity or tautness; to become slack; to lag.
- The pace slackened.
(transitive) To make slack, less taut, or less intense.
- slacken the rope
Synonyms:

ease, loosen
To deprive of cohesion by combining chemically with water; to slake.
- to slacken lime

slackening (plural slackenings)

The act by which something slackens; loss of speed, tautness, etc.
- If the following guide lose his distance from the one leading (which can only happen by his own fault), he will correct himself by slightly lengthening or shortening a few steps, in order that there may not be sudden quickenings or slackenings in the march of his platoon.1861, United States. War Dept, U.S. Infantry Tactics, page 124

plural	slackenings

What does slackening mean?: Slackening means the act by which something slackens; loss of speed, tautness, etc.
What is slackening the present participle and gerund of?: Slackening is the present participle and gerund of slacken.
What part of speech is slackening?: Slackening is a noun.
What is the plural of slackening?: The plural of slackening is slackenings.

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