What's the difference between brighten and enlighten?

Brighten


Definition:

  • (a.) To make bright or brighter; to make to shine; to increase the luster of; to give a brighter hue to.
  • (a.) To make illustrious, or more distinguished; to add luster or splendor to.
  • (a.) To improve or relieve by dispelling gloom or removing that which obscures and darkens; to shed light upon; to make cheerful; as, to brighten one's prospects.
  • (a.) To make acute or witty; to enliven.
  • (v. i.) To grow bright, or more bright; to become less dark or gloomy; to clear up; to become bright or cheerful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Lewinsky affair did not leave him disillusioned and Engskov's eyes brighten as he recalls his time in Washington: "It was an idealistic time.
  • (2) The fluorescent brightening agent, applied as a counterstain, aided in the location of the specimen.
  • (3) The rustic rooms have clay tiles and wooden furniture, and the walls are brightened up with local fabrics.
  • (4) The taxidermist's eyes brightened, and he led me to a human skeleton half hidden in the back of the room.
  • (5) The nucleus, a huge lump of rock and ice, was several miles wide on its approach to the sun, and brightened as the sun heated it to create an atmosphere, or coma, of ice and dust which was blown away from the sun to form a tail.
  • (6) To assess their potential use as fluorescent stains for flow cytometry, the cell staining specificity of 55 compounds, originally synthesized for use as textile dyes and fluorescent brighteners, was explored and their excitation and emission wavebands determined.
  • (7) The upstairs living room, which I remember from the last time I interviewed her as slightly gloomy, crowded with towers of books and magazines and oppressive paintings and wall hangings, is today brightened by yet more flowers, all in deep shades of orange and red.
  • (8) These results suggest specific properties associated with the brightening and dimming systems.
  • (9) With respect to vital staining the optical brightener Blankophor RKH exhibited most favorable properties.
  • (10) We have so many beautiful things …” She brightens up.
  • (11) We attribute the brightness shift to the saturation of the transient response: a limitation on the maximum transient when responding to rapid brightening or dimming.
  • (12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest New Brighton, Wallasey: the New Brighteners, a self help group formed in the Wirral, have a formed a volunteer group to keep the shore and beaches clean of plastic litter.
  • (13) Add the chopped stems to the onions and continue cooking till they have both softened and brightened.
  • (14) The short-term prospects have undoubtedly brightened.
  • (15) A reduction in the accommodative lag during book retinoscopy would result in brightening of the reflex along with a shift in the "against" direction.
  • (16) Hyper-pigmentation as a manifestation of contact sensitivity to optical brighteners has previously been reported.
  • (17) This polarity-sensitive adaptation fits with Jung's hypothesis that separate channels signal 'brightening' and 'darkening' in the human visual system.
  • (18) Updated at 11.22am BST 10.45am BST Italy brightens the mood Further reaction on the Italian bond sale from Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Strategy.
  • (19) News that Italy had surprisingly fallen back into recession in the second quarter coupled with evidence that the faltering recovery in the eurozone was having a dampening impact on German industry contributed to a downbeat mood brightened only when shares on Wall Street rose in early trading.
  • (20) Instawindow … The cheap and cheerful way to brighten up your view.

Enlighten


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To supply with light; to illuminate; as, the sun enlightens the earth.
  • (v. t.) To make clear to the intellect or conscience; to shed the light of truth and knowledge upon; to furnish with increase of knowledge; to instruct; as, to enlighten the mind or understanding.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Kalachakra Puja takes place in the eastern state of Bihar at the holy Bodhgaya site, where the Buddha gained enlightenment.
  • (2) As Justices Stewart and White famously said, "the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defence and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government".
  • (3) Society now takes a more enlightened, community-based approach for people like my daughter.
  • (4) The study was aimed at the enlightenment of intracortical spreading mechanisms in focal epileptic seizures produced by local application of Acetylcholine.
  • (5) Surjit S Bhalla, a Delhi-based consultant and former World Bank economist, said the British decision was "enlightened".
  • (6) With careful and enlightened use, pesticide toxicity, to both man and the environment, could be significantly reduced.
  • (7) Marginalised and wronged groups have been able to use online campaigns to usher us all forward into a more enlightened era in which we are more open-minded about the LGBQT community, disability, race, religion and so forth.
  • (8) These data provide further enlightenment regarding the mechanisms of the well-preserved functional capacity noted in these patients.
  • (9) We were enlightened by this therapeutic experience, so we attempted combination therapy using pepleomycin suppositories to supplement intra-cavitary irradiation, for the 11 selected patients who were suffering from uterine fluor.
  • (10) In the time of enlightenment more and more people thought, that very much cases of suicide were committed in severe illness.
  • (11) Possible causes have to be seen in long time of hospitalisation (average = 304 days), and apparent inadequate enlightenment of patients and in functionally and cosmetically insufficiencies.
  • (12) Our purpose is to enlighten the central position of competence in cognitive structures and coping systems of the patients.
  • (13) in 1991, French philosophy enjoyed a golden age akin to classical Greece or Enlightenment Germany.
  • (14) I haven't felt this enlightened since extraordinary rendition.
  • (15) People don’t have sex within only one borough – an example of why balkanisation is more expensive than collectivism The immediate anxiety was that elected officials are often not public health experts: you might get a very enlightened council, who understood the needs of the disenfranchised and prioritised them; or you might get a bunch of puffed-up moralists who spent their syphilis budget on a new aqua aerobics provision for the overweight.
  • (16) Daud Naji, an Enlighten Movement leader, said on Sunday that they had been told only that there was a “heightened risk” of attack and had subsequently cancelled nine of 10 planned routes.
  • (17) Beverage price increases were regarded to be the least effective approach by nurses and clerical employees, while physicians felt that the press was the least likely source of enlightenment.
  • (18) The first museums on history of nature were opened in early Enlightenment and had originated from baroque curio galleries at most of the European courts.
  • (19) But then the dislocations and traumas caused by industralisation and urbanisation accelerated the growth of ideologies of race and blood in even enlightened western Europe.
  • (20) Had English rulers taken a more enlightened view of gender issues they might not have got into such a mess.