Word.ws English Dictionary

tarten

tarten verb: to make tart or bitter.

Verb

tarten (third-person singular simple present tartens, present participle tartening, simple past and past participle tartened)

  1. (transitive) To make tart or bitter
    • These faults in a scholar tend to tarten the writing, to enliven the reader.1956, Library Journal, volume 81, page 2257
    • I loved their shouts of welcome as I trudged across the fields carrying the heavy jug. Mama mixed the old time drink from cold well water, a pinch of ginger, molasses and some vinegar to tarten it.1964, Long Island Forum, volumes 27-29, page 169
  2. (intransitive) To become tart or bitter
    • […] her sweetness tartened as one side of her clutched loyalty, the other love.1928, The Second American Caravan: A Yearbook of American Literature

Forms of tarten

third-person singular presenttartens
present participletartening
past participletartened
pasttartened

Origin of tarten

From tart + -en.

Questions about tarten

What does tarten mean?
Tarten means to make tart or bitter.
What part of speech is tarten?
Tarten is a verb.
What is the past tense of tarten?
The past tense of tarten is tartened.

Words near tarten in the dictionary

  1. tarted
  2. tarted up
  3. tartelette
  4. tartelettes
  5. tartemorion
  6. tarten
  7. tartened
  8. tartening
  9. tartens
  10. tarter
  11. Tarters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tarten (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: “tarten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tarten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.