HEIGHTENING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does heightening mean? 

• HEIGHTENING (adjective)
  The adjective HEIGHTENING has 1 sense:

1. reaching a higher intensity

  Familiarity information: HEIGHTENING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEIGHTENING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Reaching a higher intensity

Context example:

their heightening fears

Similar:

intensifying (increasing in strength or intensity)

 Context examples 

He shouted a hoarse order, and his seamen worked swiftly and silently, heightening the bulwarks and strengthening them.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

High levels of salt consumption can increase blood pressure, thereby heightening the risk of heart disease.

(Poor Diet Kills More People Than Smoking, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

To all she must have saved some trouble of head or hand; and were it only in supporting the spirits of her aunt Bertram, keeping her from the evil of solitude, or the still greater evil of a restless, officious companion, too apt to be heightening danger in order to enhance her own importance, her being there would have been a general good.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The secrecy with which everything had been carried on between them, was rationally treated as enormously heightening the crime, because, had any suspicion of it occurred to the others, proper measures would have been taken to prevent the marriage; and he called on Elinor to join with him in regretting that Lucy's engagement with Edward had not rather been fulfilled, than that she should thus be the means of spreading misery farther in the family.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

"Yet I hardly know how," cried Marianne, "unless it had been under totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality."

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)