Raise the grade of?

Usage examples of steepen.

It was a simple exponential curve, she recognized, a growth rising slowly at first, steepening up to a point labeled NOW.

Below the crowding of its thatched roofs and walls of polygonal stones, vertiginous terraces of varied crops made stairsteps down the mountain for a hundred meters or so, before its sides steepened too much for even Andeans to carve their farmland from it.

Having trudged some way along the welcome level of the valley, Reggie was led across the stream and up again through a young plantation of firs by a path which steepened sharply.

The level field of waist-high grass sloped gradually up to the steppes on the right, but it narrowed and the incline steepened toward the far end of the valley until it became the other wall of a narrow gorge.

I became aware of the sound of my breath, whistling and humming crazily into the stone: the cliff was steepening, and I was laboring backbreakingly for every inch.

I used my own knee and insisted, presenting strike after strike and going beyond the matter of physical force and adding the strength of zen and two or three times his breath was caught in his throat and I knew I'd given pain and perhaps with any luck had found a nerve, the femoral or the rectus femoris, inducing paralysis, but the effort had been appalling because of the tension already there in the muscles and I brought it down, dangerously, to the point where I could recover a small measure of the strength I'd need when the final effort had to be made, a half-second or a minute from now, no later than a minute because fatigue moves into a steepening curve towards the point of total exhaustion.

But soon her thoughts were on the path as they crossed narrow,' miraculous meadows, then scrublands where simlas grazed, and beyond to a steepening pass wedged between two hills.

But soon her thoughts were on the path as they crossed narrow,’ miraculous meadows, then scrublands where simlas grazed, and beyond to a steepening pass wedged between two hills.

Gradually, the slope steepened, the walls of the ravine fading into the ground and they came out on the bare mountainside again.

Meanwhile he steepened his bank again, judged his sweep over Ogden would clear the IEE tower.

The trail steepened quickly after they reached me beginning peaks, and they moved through a narrow defile that opened like a pocket into the mountains.

Slow at first, the way I followed steepened abruptly after a time and led off to the northeast, then into a gentler decline.

If the ground isn't reached soon and this slope steepens, we've had it.

He'll go into a series of switchbacks when the slope steepens, but after it flattens out again he always returns to his original course.

The hill was beginning to steepen and his lorry was heavy with Danish thermostatic radiator controls.