v. [f. STOUT a. + -EN5.]
1. trans. To make stout.
1834. L. Hunt, Lond. Jrnl., I. Suppl. p. iv/2. Men may surely learn how to stouten their legs, as well as to improve their stockings.
1887. D. C. Murray & Herman, One Traveller Returns, xiv. 213. But however she stoutened her heart.
1910. P. Lubbock, in Q. Rev., Jan., 217. How necessary for a successful portrait it is that sympathy should be stoutened by a certain detachment.
2. intr. To grow stout.
1863. ‘Holme Lee,’ A. Warleigh, I. 113. John stoutening fast into rectorial dignity.
1865. Mrs. Whitney, Gayworthys, xv. He did not stouten much as summer came on.
1890. Pictorial World, 7 Aug., 186/3. He felt her perceptibly stiffening, and stoutening, and bonyfying in his clasp.
Hence Stoutening vbl. sb.
1853. Ruskin, Stones Venice, I. App. xv. 385. Much hardening of hands and gross stoutening of bodies in all this.
