Tightening

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Tighten \Tight"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Tightened}; p. pr. &
     vb. n. {Tightening}.]
     To draw tighter; to straiten; to make more close in any
     manner.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           Just where I please, with tightened rein
           I'll urge thee round the dusty plain.    --Fawkes.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Tightening pulley} (Mach.), a pulley which rests, or is
        forced, against a driving belt to tighten it.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  tightening
       n : the act of making something tighter; "the tightening of
           economic controls" [ant: {loosening}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  52 Moby Thesaurus words for "tightening":
     accelerando, acceleration, aggravation, beefing-up, blowing up,
     blowup, clamping, clamping down, compression, concentration,
     condensation, consolidation, crescendoing, crescent, crush,
     deepening, enhancement, exacerbation, exaggeration, expanding,
     explosion, growing, heating-up, heightening, increasing,
     incremental, information explosion, intensification, intensifying,
     lengthening, magnification, multiplying, nip, on the increase,
     pickup, pinch, population explosion, press, pressure,
     proliferating, redoubling, reinforcement, snowballing, speedup,
     spreading, squeeze, squeezing, step-up, strengthening, swelling,
     tweak, waxing