Word.ws English Dictionary

tenser

tenser is the comparative form of tense.

Meaning of tense

Adjective

tense (comparative tenser, superlative tensest)

  1. Showing signs of stress or strain; not relaxed.
    • You need to relax, all this overtime and stress is making you tense.
    Synonyms:
    stressed, unrelaxed, taut
  2. Characterized by strain (on the nerves, emotions, etc). (Compare charged.)
    • Chi stops, but her eyes continue to pierce right through me and into Karima. A tense moment later, she drops her eyes back to the terminal and scans the data once more. The showdown is over, at least for the moment.2022 June 16, Marc B. DeGeorge, A Call to the Sky, MuseMarc Studio LLC, →ISBN
  3. Pulled taut, without any slack.
  4. Produced with relative constriction of the vocal tract.

See all 11 meanings of tense

Questions about tenser

What is tenser the comparative form of?
Tenser is the comparative form of tense.

Words near tenser in the dictionary

  1. tensened
  2. tenseness
  3. tensenesses
  4. tensening
  5. tensens
  6. tenser
  7. tenses
  8. tenses up
  9. tensest
  10. tensibility
  11. tensible

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tenser (page history and authors); tense (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-tenser.wav.

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