Word.ws English Dictionary

steepens

steepens is the third-person singular simple present indicative of steepen.

Meaning of steepen

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.

Questions about steepens

What is steepens the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Steepens is the third-person singular simple present indicative of steepen.

Words near steepens in the dictionary

  1. steepened
  2. steepener
  3. steepeners
  4. steepening
  5. steepenings
  6. steepens
  7. steeper
  8. steepers
  9. steepest
  10. steepeth
  11. steepie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: steepens (page history and authors); steepen (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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