ENLIVEN • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Enliven

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/ɛnlˈaɪvən/ Listen

verb

Enliven v. t. (past & past part. enlivened; pres. part. enlivening)

To give life, action, or motion to; to make vigorous or active; to excite; to quicken; as, fresh fuel enlivens a fire. "Lo! of themselves th' enlivened chessmen move."

To give spirit or vivacity to; to make sprightly, gay, or cheerful; to animate; as, mirth and good humor enliven a company; enlivening strains of music.

Synonyms: To animate; rouse; inspire; cheer; encourage; comfort; exhilarate; inspirit; invigorate.

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Etymology of 'Enliven'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Enliven" Quotes from Famous Books

... I'm sorry. I hoped you'd stay to dinner and enliven us a little. Jim and I don't have very jovial evenings, do we, Jim? Sometimes I think I might as well be ...

— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... One truth prepares for a second. If it is a solemn and sad fact that men are sinners, and blind and dead in their trespasses and sin, it is also a cheering fact that the Holy Spirit can enlighten the darkest understanding, and enliven the most torpid and indifferent soul; and it is a still further, and most encouraging truth and fact, that the Holy Spirit is given to those who ask for it, with more readiness than a father gives bread to his hungry child. Here, ...

— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... several of this band seemed so much disconcerted as to excite among the spectators strong prepossessions of their guilt. The real murderer had a countenance incapable of betraying him—a sullen, dark look, which neither the feast nor wine cup could enliven, and which the peril of discovery and death could ...

— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... on with very little amusement somehow. Here were two or three thousand people packed in the street, and all they had to enliven their festive gathering was the same old toys their fathers' fathers' fathers had ...

— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... honourable, and contemn what was base in a light satiric vein of talk which was instructive and edifying to the hearers. Nor was Lykurgus himself a man of unmixed austerity: indeed, he is said by Sosibius to have set up the little statue of the god of laughter, and introduced merriment at proper times to enliven their wine-parties and other gatherings. In a word, he trained his countrymen neither to wish nor to understand how to live as private men, but, like bees, to be parts of the commonwealth, and gather round their chief, forgetting ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

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