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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Brightening

Brighten \Bright"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Brightened; p. pr. & vb. n. Brightening.] Note: [From Bright, a.]

  1. To make bright or brighter; to make to shine; to increase the luster of; to give a brighter hue to.

  2. To make illustrious, or more distinguished; to add luster or splendor to.

    The present queen would brighten her character, if she would exert her authority to instill virtues into her people.
    --Swift.

  3. To improve or relieve by dispelling gloom or removing that which obscures and darkens; to shed light upon; to make cheerful; as, to brighten one's prospects.

    An ecstasy, which mothers only feel, Plays round my heart and brightens all my sorrow.
    --Philips.

  4. To make acute or witty; to enliven.
    --Johnson.

Wiktionary
brightening

n. An instance of becoming brighter vb. (present participle of brighten English)

Usage examples of "brightening".

Full daylight, or its analogue, came from the brightening east to meet the travelers on the road.

Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of blue flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions.

There will be an equatorial brightening of the sun, essentially, an outflux of energy that will bathe the orbital plane of Earth, and the other planets.

Hesperides of the silent air, and his blinding light comes slant across the glassy calm till it strikes on the scarred and storm-rent faces of these Breton crags, illuminating and vivifying every nook and cranny of the cliffs beneath, burning on the summits and brightening their natural red to the vivid crimson of dripping blood, changing the coarse grass and yellow starwort into threads of emerald and glimmering stars, burning in a golden mist around the yellow flowers of the overhanging broom, and striking with fiercest ray on one naked rock of solid stone which juts out like a huge horn over the brink of the abyss, and around which a strong rope is noosed and firmly knotted.

Whilst man and woman stood well back on the sand beneath the brightening sky, the machine pulled plugs of rock from one interior wall of the crevice.

It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the brightening dawn--streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.

Yet, with all her childishness and impetuosity, Erica was womanly, too, as Charles Osmond saw by the way she waited on her mother, thinking of everything which the invalid could possibly want while they were gone, brightening the whole place with her sunshiny presence.

The dark, gray, humpbacked shapes of Marine vehicles and inflatable tentage were just visible in the paler gray light that was slowly brightening in the east.

He felt a brightening of the senses and a surge of energy, so much so that he rose to his feet unprompted, the Errin still wrapped about his hips.

Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of blue flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions.

And lower down the great forest trees arch over it, and the sunbeams trickle through them, and dance in many a quiet pool, turning the far-down sands to gold, brightening majestic tree-ferns, and shining on the fragile polypodium tamariscinum which clings tremblingly to the branches of the graceful waringhan, on a beautiful lygodium which adorns the uncouth trunk of an artocarpus, on glossy ginger-worts and trailing yams, on climbers and epiphytes, and on gigantic lianas which, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, descend in vast festoons, many of them with orange and scarlet flowers and fruitage, passing from tree to tree, and interlacing the forest with a living network, while selaginellas and lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns.

Interspersed among them were big canvasback troop-carriers, their headlamps glaring in the brightening daylight.

On Catoctin Mountain, a ridge of the Appalachians that runs north to south through the western part of the state, the trees were brightening into soft yellows and golds.

She studied him against the brightening firelight, crushingly aware of how quickly she had come to desire him.

Only Pierre and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of bashfulness at their own feelings.