Library / English Dictionary

RIPEN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Grow ripe

Example:

The plums ripen in July

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "ripen" is one way to...):

grow; maturate; mature (develop and reach maturity; undergo maturation)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

ripening (coming to full development; becoming mature)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cause to ripen or develop fully

Example:

Age matures a good wine

Synonyms:

mature; ripen

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "ripen" is one way to...):

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

Cause:

ripen (grow ripe)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

ripening (coming to full development; becoming mature)

Credits

 Context examples: 

“I did that last night,” said Uriah; “but it'll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Let it wait and ripen, was her father's advice, and he practiced what he preached, having waited patiently thirty years for fruit of his own to ripen, and being in no haste to gather it even now when it was sweet and mellow.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the champagne—honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who adulterated it!—and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to Dora.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)