thicken

«thicken» in Mova's school dictionary: to become thicker, or to make something thicker — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (thicken, thickens, thickened, thickening)

meaning for a pupil

1) To thicken is to become thicker, or to make something thicker. tree →

2) A liquid that thickens becomes less runny, like sauce or custard. tree →

3) Fog, smoke or a crowd that thickens becomes denser. tree →

4) «The plot thickens» means a story or situation becomes more mysterious and complicated. tree →

sense in the lessons

In cooking and science lessons on materials: heating custard or adding flour thickens it. In geography, fog thickens. In stories, «the plot thickens» signals a new twist. In maths a line or a layer may thicken by a measured amount.

examples

• Stir the sauce until it thickens. tree →
• Add flour to thicken the soup. tree →
• The fog thickened and we could not see the road. tree →
• The crowd thickened near the stage. tree →
• The ice on the pond thickened during the cold night. tree →
• Then the missing key turned up in Ben's bag — the plot thickens! tree →
• Trees thicken their trunks a little every year. tree →

note

Opposite: thin (out). Noun: thickness; adjective: thick. In cooking, a thickener is something added (flour, cornflour) to make a liquid thicker.

In the corpora

• Drugs like EPO thicken the blood, which can raise the risk of dangerous clots.

Trees and pragmatics

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