steepened

Verb

steepen (third-person singular simple present steepens, present participle steepening, simple past and past participle steepened)

1. (transitive) To make steeper.
   • With a rare and beautiful ease one can now ring up a boffin, as I did the other day, and say: "As a price for not opposing our Parliamentary Powers for a new marshalling yard, the Council at X demands that the bridge over X Lane shall have 16 ft. 6 in. headroom. This means steepening our gradient...1960 April, G. F. Fiennes, “Unpunctuality - the cause and the cure”, in Trains Illustrated, page 244
2. (intransitive) To become steeper.
   • As the way steepened […] I could detect in the hollow of the hill some traces of the old path.