mellowing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mellow.

   Long months in oak barrels are mellowing the wine's harsh edges.

   Roasting garlic is a simple way of mellowing its sharp bite.

   Note

   What gets softened ranges from the literal to the personal: fruit ripening, a wine or cheese losing its sharpness, soil worked until it is ready for planting (a regional use), then harshness of any kind, and finally people, calmed by age and experience or made pleasantly tipsy by drink. The verb takes the thing being changed as its object: time is mellowing him.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process of making something mellow, or of becoming mellow.

   Critics heard a clear mellowing in the band's later albums.

   Slow cooking brings about a mellowing of the onions' sharp flavor.

   Similarsoftening

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