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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

freshen en · VERB

Pronunciation

  • frĕshʹən
  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /ˈfɹɛʃən/

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *preyskosder. Proto-Germanic *friskaz Proto-West Germanic *frisk Old English fersċ Middle English fressh English fresh English -en English freshen From fresh + -en.

Meanings

  1. (intransitive) To become fresh. ▸ To be refreshed.
    • Ah, how my spirit freshens, as I taste That life-restoring breeze! 1799, Samuel Jackson Pratt, Gleanings in England, London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Volume 4, Letter 3, p. 39:
    • He descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs. Troy’s nature freshened within him; he thought he would rest and bathe here before going farther. 1874, Thomas Hardy, “Adventures by the Shore”, in Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, page 206:
  2. (intransitive) To become fresh. ▸ To become cool.
    • A little later, Harry sensed, by a freshening of the air, that they had reached the edge of the forest. 2007 July 21, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter 36, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter; 7), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 728:
    • 1793, uncredited translator, The Natural History of Birds by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell, Volume 4, “The Titiri, or Pipiri,” p. 468, They breed, says M. Deshayes, in the heats of autumn, and during the freshening air of winter, at St. Domingo …
    • We set out at once, swinging along at a good gait in the freshening afternoon, walking now the track, now the road which skirted it [...] 1927, Frederick Philip Grove, A Search for America, Book 4, Chapter 2:
  3. (intransitive) To become fresh. ▸ To become not salty, to lose its salinity. (of water)
    • He coasted along the American Continent from the 60th degree of northern latitude, till he fell in with the Gulph of St. Lawrence, which he continued to navigate till he perceived the water to freshen; 1785, John Rickman, Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage, to the Pacific Ocean, London: E. Newbery, Introduction, pp. xxx-xxxi:
    • They [...] drank from fresh-water lakes formed where old salt ice had freshened and melted [...] 1949, Jim Kjelgaard, chapter 1, in Kalak of the Ice, New York: Holiday House:
  4. (intransitive, of wind) To become stronger.
    • wind force three, freshening from the southwest
    • As he gazed up, the night wind freshened and the rustling of leaves became louder and higher, with a semblance of urgent repetition [...] 1974, Richard Adams, chapter 7, in Shardik, London: Oneworld, published 2014:
    • [...] he call’d his chief Mate as he was going off from the Watch, and ask’d him how all things far’d; who answer’d, that all was well, and the Gale freshen’d, and they run at a great Rate; 1727, Daniel Defoe, chapter 11, in An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, London, page 214:
    • All day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than died down; and towards afternoon, a swell began to set in from round the outer Hebrides. 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “I Hear of the ‘Red Fox’”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 101:
    • [...] the wind freshen’d, and carryed our Maintop-mast by the board; in which disaster, the man that was lower-most, and least in danger, fell over-board, and was drowned; 1674, James Janeway, “Remarkable Sea Deliverances”, in Mr. James Janeway’s Legacy to His Friends, London: Dorman Newman, page 53:
  5. (intransitive, of a cow, transitive) To begin or resume giving milk, especially after calving; to cause to resume giving milk.
    • It was a miserably small two-week net for eight good Holsteins, but they were near the end of their lactation period; soon he’d have to arrange for freshening them again. 1955, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Not This August, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Book 1, Chapter 4:
    • The cow freshened the week before Christmas. The calf was a heifer and there was rejoicing on Baxter’s Island. 1938, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, chapter 26, in The Yearling, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, page 329:
    • For Sale—Three registered holstein cows. Due to freshen the first of Jan. February and March. Prices that will sell. Age three and five years. Eugune Gibson, Smyrna. 1919 January, in The Chenango County Farm Bureau News, volume 5, number 1, page 7
  6. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To refresh; to revive; to renew.
    • New hope freshened his heart. 1956, Saul Bellow, chapter 5, in Seize the Day, New York: Crest, published 1965, page 89:
    • 1657, John Davies (translator), Astrea by Honoré d'Urfé, London: H. Moseley et al., Volume 2, Part 3, Book 1, pp. 122-123, … the good Druid went to seeke out some hearbs by the bank sides, which he knew were good to be applyed unto my wounds, and which would a little freshen and invigorate my spirits;
    • I’ve been pegging away at mathematics till my head is in a muddle, and I’m going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn. 1868, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, “A Telegram”, in Little Women: […], 1st part, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1869, →OCLC, page 231:
    • They went into the little room again at about a quarter to nine, freshened by a meal in the canteen and a cigarette. 1952, Nevil Shute, chapter 6, in The Far Country, London: Heinemann:
  7. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To make cool.
    • [...] Natal, the glorious green country on the coast, lush, forested, watered, warm in the bitterest winter, in the summer freshened by breezes off the sea or the high mountains that bounded it inland. 1973, Jan Morris, chapter 3, in Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page 60:
  8. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To make green (vegetation that has become dry).
    • 1915, Edward Sorenson, On the Wallaby, Sydney: The Catholic Press, Chapter 11, [The animals] were not valuable enough to be worth the trouble of saving until rain came to fill the holes and freshen the pastures.
  9. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To remove or cover unpleasant qualities such as staleness, bad odour or taste (in air, breath, water, etc.).
    • Mrs. Meyrick’s house was not noisy: the front parlor looked on the river, and the back on gardens, so that though she was reading aloud to her daughters, the window could be left open to freshen the air of the small double room where a lamp and two candles were burning. 1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XVIII, in Daniel Deronda, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II (Meeting Streams), page 356:
    • Tajirika found him trying to freshen the air in the chamber with perfume, but no amount of perfume could quite remove the stink in the offices of the Ruler. 2007, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, chapter 17, in Wizard of the Crow, New York: Knopf Doubleday, published 2008, page 392:
    • Nowadays, she’d be the kind of woman who’d carry one of those breath-freshening atomizers in her purse—gassing herself with the atomizer, all day long, just in case someone might be moved to spontaneously kiss her. 1989, John Irving, chapter 7, in A Prayer for Owen Meany, New York: William Morrow, page 333:
    • [...] from the earliest time that he could remember, there had lain pleasantly in the end of his nose the various scents of mint—used to freshen the water in the ewers—or of basil, camomile, fennel, hysop and lavender—which he had been taught to strew on the rushy floors [...] 1958, T. H. White, chapter 20, in The Once and Future King, New York: Berkley, page 179:
  10. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To touch up (makeup); to give (a body part, especially the face) a quick wash.
    • [He] stepped with terrible suddenness into what proved to be no more than a trickle of freezing water, enough at any rate to freshen his armpits, crotch and feet. 1976, Don DeLillo, “Reflections: Logicon Project Minus-One”, in Ratner’s Star, New York: Knopf, page 367:
    • [...] I knew that their laughter was real and that their lives were cheerful comedies, interrupted only by costume changes and freshening of make-up. 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 35, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, page 266:
    • “Grace is upstairs, freshening her eyes. [...]” 1971, Alice Munro, “Heirs of the Living Body”, in Lives of Girls and Women, page 57:
    • It was after seven, she was freshening her lipstick and perking up her appearance [...] 1958, Truman Capote, chapter 8, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Penguin, published 1961, page 56:
  11. (transitive) To make fresh. ▸ To touch up the paint on (something).
    • In staging the school’s Christmas play the whole town helped or meddled: older men repaired the platform, assembled the crib; young ones fashioned new innkeepers and freshened the masks with paint. 1997, Toni Morrison, Paradise, New York: Knopf, published 1998, page 185:
    • I remember feeling disappointed [...] because the great sign of a trumpeter designed by Rooke, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, had been freshened by some inferior hand. 1922, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, chapter I, in The Trembling of the Veil, London: Privately printed for subscribers only by T[homas] Werner Laurie, Ltd., →OCLC, book I (Four Years 1887–1891), pages 3–4:
  12. (transitive) To give redness to (the face or cheeks of a person with light skin).
    • ‘Might copper beech trees mark the route?’ suggested Adelaide, her dumpling countenance freshened by the excitement this thought induced. 1986, William Trevor, “The News from Ireland”, in The News from Ireland and Other Stories, New York: Viking, page 15:
    • It was a breezy sunny day; the air freshened the girl's cheeks, and gracefully dishevelled their ringlets: […] 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Mr. Donne’s Exodus”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 107:
    • The wind had freshened his warm complexion as it freshens the glow of a brand. 1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, “‘Where Heaves the Turf in Many a Mould’ring Heap’”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC, page 59:
  13. (transitive) To make less salty; to separate, as water, from saline ingredients.
    • to freshen water, fish, or flesh
    • [...] ordinarily a wizard looks after such small conveniences by way of spells, the very least and commonest kind of spells, and indeed it takes little more magic to freshen seawater and so save the bother of carrying fresh water. 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin, chapter 10, in A Wizard of Earthsea, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2012, page 196:
    • Let me remark, that the great exercise used by these volunteer adventurers; their quantity of vegetable food; their freshening their salt provision, by boiling it in water, and mixing it with flour; their beverage of whey; and their total abstinence from spirituous liquors—are the happy preservatives from the scurvy, which brought all the preceding adventurers, who perished, to their miserable end. 1784, Thomas Pennant, Arctic Zoology, London, Volume 1, Introduction, p. clxxxviii:
  14. (transitive) To relieve, as a rope, by change of place where friction wears it; or to renew, as the material used to prevent chafing.
    • to freshen a hawse
    • [...] when a ship is to lie with all winds that may blow, the best anchor and open hawse should be towards the worst wind that may blow, to raise the waves, and give the ship a pitching motion [...] and must leave no more of the smallest moorings within board, than just enough to freshen the hawse on occasion; 1777, William Hutchinson, “On Mooring Ships”, in A Treatise on Practical Seamanship, Liverpool, page 73:
  15. (transitive) To top up (a drink).
    • She dried her eyes and blew her nose and picked up her drink. ¶ Cass stared at her helplessly. “Let me freshen it for you,” she said, and took the glass into the kitchen. 1962, James Baldwin, Another Country, New York: Dial, published 1963, Book 1, Chapter 2, p. 89:
    • “Get in here and freshen my glass. You’ve got lousy manners for the son of a front-family, and just a^([sic]) hour since we’re engaged...” 1967, James Purdy, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, London: GMP Publishers, published 1984, Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 99:
  16. (historical, transitive) To top up (primer) in a firearm.
    • Freshen the priming of your pistols—the mist of the falls is apt to dampen the brimstone—and stand firm for a close struggle, while I fire on their rush. 1826, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter VII, in The Last of the Mohicans; a Narrative of 1757. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea— […], →OCLC, page 99:
    • She pushed her tomahawk and fighting knife into the back of her belt, opened her powder horn and freshened the priming in her rifle and pistols [...] 1979, Aaron Fletcher, The Mountain Breed, New York: Dell, Part 5, Chapter 19, p. 329:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
freshening Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
freshened Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
freshened Tense=Past lexicographic
freshens Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic

Deriveds

freshener · freshen up · freshening · unfreshened · refreshen

Translations (16)

ga beoigh (To make fresh) · bg обезсолявам (To make less salty) · hy թարմացնել (To make fresh) · mk освежува (To make fresh) · bg освежавам се (To become fresh) · yi פֿרישן (To make fresh) · hy թարմանալ (To become fresh) · mk се освежува (To become fresh) · bg освежавам (To make fresh) · ga beoigh (To become fresh) · bg ободрявам (To make fresh) · mk се освежи (To become fresh) · mk освежи (To make fresh) · ga úraigh (To make fresh) · ro împrospăta (To make fresh) · bg ободрявам се (To become fresh)