ppl. a. [f. SOFTEN v.]
1. Made or rendered physically soft or yielding.
1600. Surflet, Countrie Farme, I. xv. 95. Mixing … the powder of a softned bricke in her meate.
1688. Boyle, Final Causes Nat. Things, IV. 191. To … make a Second Attrition of their already much Softned Aliments.
1830. R. Knox, Béclard’s Anat., 340. The softened nervous substance is sometimes at the point of being liquid.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VIII. 871. The softened central area of the tumour.
b. Characterized by softening or softness.
1839–47. Todd’s Cycl. Anat., III. 720 B. The softened condition of the brain is doubtless due to a similar cause.
1843. R. J. Graves, Syst. Clin. Med., xv. 183. Certain phenomena … indicate a softened state of the heart.
2. Rendered soft or softer, in other senses.
1716. Pope, Iliad, VI. 622. The soften’d chief … dried the falling drops, and thus pursued.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, III. vii. 206. Then, at the musing hour of twilight, her softened thoughts returned to Valancourt. Ibid., xiii. 434. The softened music, floating at a distance, soothed her melancholy mind.
1829. Scott, Rob Roy, Introd. A softened account of this anecdote.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., II. xxvii. 116. ‘Get up, child,’ said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, xii. 404. Its [the olive-tree’s] pearly greys and softened greens.
1894. Mrs. Dyan, Man’s Keeping (1899), 311. She … saw that new softened look in his eyes.
