SLACKENING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Slackening

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/slˈækənɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Slacken, Slack v. i. (past & past part. slacked, slackened; pres. part. slacking, slackening)

To become slack; to be made less tense, firm, or rigid; to decrease in tension; as, a wet cord slackens in dry weather.

To be remiss or backward; to be negligent.

To lose cohesion or solidity by a chemical combination with water; to slake; as, lime slacks.

To abate; to become less violent. "Whence these raging fires Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames."

To lose rapidity; to become more slow; as, a current of water slackens.

To languish; to fail; to flag.

To end; to cease; to desist; to slake. (Obs.) "That through your death your lineage should slack." "They will not of that firste purpose slack."

See images of 'Slackening'

Etymology of 'Slackening'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Slackening" Quotes from Famous Books

... the Thames curving about and twisting itself into the shape of a corkscrew between London Bridge and the Nore, the tug had besides continually to alter her course, thus, naturally, making us change ours too, as the tow-rope slackening one moment would cause the ship's bows to fall off, and then tightening like a fiddle-string the next instant her head would be jerked back again viciously into its former position, right astern of the little vessel at whose mercy we were, as if she insisted on ...

— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... clerk in the pouch, the lock is snapped, and he is standing at the door not a minute too soon or too late; the pouch is thrown out at a designated spot and one deftly caught an instant after without a slackening of the speed of the train. The pouch thus caught is taken to the counter, opened and emptied by the fourth clerk, and the letters immediately placed in the hands of the second clerk, who assorts the local ...

— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... off, and that no further violence was possible, she slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs. Tulliver stood by in silence, quivering with fear. But Maggie became conscious that as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise ...

— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... buoyant with hope when, at last, the green light from the ports showed that the sun was shining up above, and the slackening drive of the submarine's powerful motors told that ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different extent from that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs are usually ...

— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

More quotes...