steepen

present singular third person steepens · participle present steepening · participle past steepened · past steepened

1. transitiveTo make steeper.

   1 more example

   With a rare and beautiful ease one can now ring up a boffin, as I did the other day, and say: "As a price for not opposing our Parliamentary Powers for a new marshalling yard, the Council at X demands that the bridge over X Lane shall have 16 ft. 6 in. headroom. This means steepening our gradient from 1 in 70 to 1 in 65 for half a mile on a 20-chain curve. What difference will this make to the loads of Type "2", "3" and "4" diesels please?". Back comes the answer.

   1960 April, G. F. Fiennes, “Unpunctuality - the cause and the cure”, in Trains Illustrated, page 244

2. intransitiveTo become steeper.

   As the way steepened […] I could detect in the hollow of the hill some traces of the old path.

   2 more examples

   Soon after Crowhurst, the down grade steepens to 1 in 100 as the line descends the side of a valley, at the mouth of which a glimpse of the sea can be caught—the only one.

   1957 August 28, H. P. White, “The Tonbridge-Hastings Line and its Traffic”, in Railway Magazine, page 528

   Immediately beyond Churn Lane the climb begins at 1 in 78, steepening to 1 in 66. Speed soon falls and a number of heavy hop-pickers' specials have come to grief here.

   1960 March, H. P. White, “The Hawkhurst branch of the Southern Region”, in Trains Illustrated, page 170