ripen

«ripen» in Mova's school dictionary: to become ready to eat, soft and sweet, as fruit and… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (ripen, ripens, ripened, ripening)

meaning for a pupil

1) To ripen means to become ready to eat, soft and sweet, as fruit and crops do. tree →

2) To ripen something means to make it ripe. tree →

3) A plan or a situation ripens when it becomes ready or right for action. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, fruits ripen as they change colour and their starch turns to sugar; bananas give off a gas (ethylene) that ripens other fruit. In farming, wheat ripens before harvest. «Ripen» uses «-en» to mean «become»: ripe → ripen, wide → widen.

examples

• The tomatoes ripened in the sun. tree →
• Put the avocado in a bag with a banana to ripen it. tree →
• The wheat ripens in late summer. tree →
• Green bananas ripen in a few days. tree →
• The apples are ripening on the tree. tree →
• Cheese ripens slowly in a cave. tree →

note

Past: ripened. Adjective: ripe. Opposite: unripe; too ripe = overripe.

In the corpora

• Unripe fruit is more acidic; as fruit ripens, sugar goes up and acid goes down.
• But the wheat and the spelt were not smitten; for they ripen late. —

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «ripen» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.