Dictionary

brownify en · VERB

Etymology

From brown + -ify.

Meanings

1. To make or become more brown.
   • Priscilla chops up all the leftover vegetables she can lay her hands on and constructs an eggy cheesy housing for them, which she brownifies until rubbery and cuts into slabs that we try to digest. 2013, Fiona Wood, Wildlife:
   • Before he was the suave superspy, Sean Connery was a handsome divil of a landlord in this 1959 Irish classic, complete with superb forced perspective leprechaun special effects and a banshee that will make you brownify your underwear. 2011 March 16, “Top 5 worst Irish accents in films”, in Metro:
   • do not forget his green and gold, and, I have to add, a cock and pinched hat equally rusty, with a break in the centre, from the polite bows he always made, and with a pair of brownified silk stockings – such was once poor A—— – now he has short hair, a plain coat, a gigured velvet waistcoat and worsted stockings 1792, Joseph Palmer, A Fortnight's Ramble to the Lakes in Westmoreland:
   • We were all going to intermarry and brownify and hold hands and honor our essential human cousinhood – weren't we? 2011, Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc., Vintage Books, →ISBN, page 232:
2. (in particular, informal) To make or become more brown. ▸ To cause to contain more racially 'brown' people, elements, or culture.
   • Peña's virtual barrio calls attention to the marginality, if not invisibility, of racial and class differences online, while also symbolizing the need to “brownify” its Euro-American white spaces. 2014, Madhavi Mallapragada, Virtual Homelands: Indian Immigrants and Online Cultures in the United States, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 41:
   • We are all going to intermarry and brownify and hold hands and honor our essential human cousinhood—weren't we? 2012, Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc., page 232:
3. (in particular, of a lake or stream) To make or become more brown. ▸ To become brown due to increased levels of humic material.

Forms

Deriveds

brownification

Relateds

brunification · browning · brown

Synonyms

embrown