Worthen

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic verb meaning to make someone or something worthy of respect, honour or value
2. An old-fashioned verb describing the act of becoming, or causing something to become, deserving of esteem
3. Obsolete term for rendering a person or thing more worthy or more deserving of regard

Etymology: "Worthen" is a verb-forming suffix attached to "worth", and the older sense it carries is "to become," so the word means roughly "to become worth" or "to become worthy." The base "worth" comes from Old English "weorth," meaning valuable or deserving, and the "-en" ending is the familiar pattern seen in verbs like "darken," "harden," and "strengthen," where it turns an adjective or noun into a verb of becoming. The "-en" element is the older of the two pieces in English, and it works the same way across many verbs. Its job is to express a change of state: a thing that was dark becomes darker, a thing that was hard becomes harder. Applied to "worth," it produces a verb describing the process of acquiring value or merit, which is why the form sounds like a plain, literal description rather than a figure of speech.