thickening

thicken +‎ -ing

• IPA^(key): /ˈθɪkənɪŋ/

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thickening (countable and uncountable, plural thickenings)

1. The process of making something, or becoming, thick or viscous.
2. A substance, usually a source of starch, used to thicken a sauce.
3. A thickened part of a structure.
   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 6:

     […] the inner layer (of nearly equally large cells) lacks the regular semiannular or annular thickenings of most other leafy liverworts […]

   • 1902, Edwin Hurry Fenwick, Obscure Diseases of the Urethra, page 30:

     They disappear at once on slightly relaxing the air-pressure, whilst true incipient thickenings of the surface remain white and unpliably stiff.

thickening

1. present participle and gerund of thicken

thickening (not comparable)

1. Beginning to thicken, becoming thicker.
   • 1960 January, G. Freeman Allen, “"Condor"—British Railways' fastest freight train”, in Trains Illustrated, page 48:

     From Keighley onwards we had obviously returned to civilisation, for the surrounding country was now studded with the sodium street lights of suburbia and a thickening industrial haze was blotting out the moon.

• “thickening”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• kitchening