thickening

English edit

thickening (countable and uncountable, plural thickenings)

The process of making something, or becoming, thick or viscous.
A substance, usually a source of starch, used to thicken a sauce.
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.

the process of making something, or becoming, thick or viscous

a substance, usually a source of starch, used to thicken a sauce

thickening

thickening (not comparable)

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.