mellowed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of mellow.

   Two decades in the job had mellowed the once-fiery editor.

   Warm lamps mellowed the harsh white walls of the waiting room.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is causative: something does the mellowing, and the thing changed is its object. Age, experience or a drink can be the cause; the object runs from fruit, cheese and soil to a fiery editor or a guest made pleasantly tipsy. In the passive the cause follows by: he was mellowed by age.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having become mellow, as a wine does with age or a person does with experience.

   The band's mellowed sound on the new album surprised longtime fans.

   Retirement turned him into a mellowed, patient man who rarely raised his voice.

   Similarsoftened, matured, relaxed

   Note

   Where mellow simply names a quality, mellowed tells a short story: the -ed ending marks the softness as the result of a change, so a mellowed voice or a mellowed critic was sharper once. Like most participles used as adjectives, it compares with more and most, as in more mellowed with every year, never with -er or -est endings.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of fruit, having turned soft or tender through ripeness.

   She baked the mellowed pears that had sat on the counter all week.

   Wasps gathered around the mellowed plums lying in the grass under the tree.

   Similarripe, soft

   Oppositeunripe

   Note

   Fruit this soft drops at a shake, and Christopher Marlowe made a threat of it in Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587–1588): a crown too heavy for a witless king's head will "fall like mellowed fruit, with shakes of death". Beside ripe, which says fruit is ready to eat, mellowed stresses the softness that ripening brings.

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