whiten

Verb

Verb Forms: whitened, whitening, whitens

To make or become white; to blanch.
turn white
- "This detergent will whiten your laundry"
(To cause) to become white or whiter; to bleach or blanch.
To increase the security of an iterated block cipher by steps that combine the data with portions of the key.
To normalize data so that the covariance matrix becomes the identity matrix; i.e., to remove correlations so each variable has unit variance.

Examples

Age had whitened his hair.
The blank tile can whiten a word, allowing you to fill in any missing letter.
The trees in spring whiten with blossoms.

Origin / Etymology

From Middle English whitenen, whitnen, from Old Norse hvítna (“to whiten”), from Proto-Germanic *hwītnōną (“to whiten, become white”), from Proto-Indo-European *kwind-, *kwint- (“bright”), equivalent to white + -en. Cognate with Icelandic hvítna (“to whiten”), Swedish vitna, hvitna (“to whiten”), Danish hvidne (“to whiten”). Compare Old English hwītian (“to whiten, become white, be white, make white”).

Synonyms

white

Antonyms

blacken

Scrabble Score: 12

whiten: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
whiten: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
whiten: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 12

whiten: valid Words With Friends Word