soften.
To make something soft or softer.
Meaning & usage
To make something soft or softer.
Soften the butter before beating in the sugar.
To undermine the morale of someone (often soften up).
Before the invasion, we softened up the enemy with the artillery.
To make less harsh.
Having second thoughts, I softened my criticism.
To become soft or softer.
The butter softened as it warmed up.
To become or make (a consonant) more lenis, to lenite.
To palatalize.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English softenen, softnen, equivalent to soft + -en.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.