Crossword clues for stiffen
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stiffen \Stiff"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stiffened; p. pr. & vb. n. Stiffening.] [See Stiff.]
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To make stiff; to make less pliant or flexible; as, to stiffen cloth with starch.
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
--Shak. To inspissate; to make more thick or viscous; as, to stiffen paste.
To make torpid; to benumb.
Stiffen \Stiff"en\, v. i. To become stiff or stiffer, in any sense of the adjective.
Like bristles rose my stiffening hair.
--Dryden.
The tender soil then stiffening by degrees.
--Dryden.
Some souls we see,
Grow hard and stiffen with adversity.
--Dryden.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
early 15c., "make steadfast," from stiff (adj.) + -en (1). Intransitive sense from 1690s. Earlier verb was simply stiff "gain strength, become strong" (late 14c.). Related: Stiffened; stiffener; stiffening. Compare German steifen "to stiffen."
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context transitive English) To make stiff. 2 (context intransitive English) To become stiff.
WordNet
v. become stiff or stiffer; "He stiffened when he saw his boss enter the room" [ant: loosen]
make stiff or stiffer; "Stiffen the cream by adding gelatine" [ant: loosen]
restrict; "Tighten the rules"; "stiffen the regulations" [syn: tighten, tighten up, constrain]
Usage examples of "stiffen".
She stiffened, unconsciously clamping down on his cock with her powerful anal muscles.
Tremaine thought, watching his whole body stiffen with annoyance, more mad at herself than him.
The antibody coating seemed to stiffen and tighten and the bacterium within writhed.
Eyes, bright and questing as those of an eagle, looked around him, and found what they sought, I felt Bellan stiffen, hard as rock.
She wore her body hair plucked clean in great patches over her body, and where hair remained it had been stiffened into great bristling spikes.
A pair of Guardswomen, resplendent in broad-brimmed hats with white plumes and lace-edged sashes embroidered with the White Lion slanting across their burnished breastplates and more pale lace at their cuffs and necks, stiffened on either side of the doors at her approach.
But they remained weak and flaccid, without the hydrostatic stiffening needed for walking.
Men cleaned their rifles, burnished their buttons and closed them to the neck, stubbed out their cigarettes and trembled a little while Castelani rampaged through the camp at Chaldi, dealing out duties, ferreting out the malingerers and stiffening spines with the swishing cane in his right hand.
William Breen Markland, the odd one, named for their Irish grandfather, and like that taciturn, obdurate old man always a nonconformist, an objector, full of booklore, aloof and stiffened with stubborn opinions.
They exhibited a relatively short metatarsus, the pubis was directed backward, and they had long processes on the tail vertebrae, which stiffened the back half of the long tail.
Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every word he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie could feel his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the increase of his spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence from it into the quite confessed poorness of violence, of iteration.
Across from him, Jake stiffened, and the planchette twitched beneath their fingers.
Aunt Olivia stiffened into a Plummer again with hurried embarrassment.
A certain spirit or element in the Christian religion, necessary and sometimes noble but always needing to be balanced by more gentle and generous elements in the Faith, began once more to strengthen, as the framework of Scholasticism stiffened or split.
The captain stiffened as the script scrolled down across her membranes.