Etymology

tighten

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Today it means: To make tighter. Full definition →

Middle English tighten ← Old English tyhtan
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The story

  1. Old English · inherited fromtyhtan
  2. Middle English · inherited fromtighten
  3. English todaytighten

Synchronically equivalent to tight + -en, but actually derived from Middle English tighten, from Old English tyhtan, thus originally unrelated to tight (Old English *þiht).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.