whiten

== English == === Etymology === From Middle English whitenen, whitnen, from Old Norse hvítna (“to whiten”), from Proto-Germanic *hwītnōną (“to whiten, become white”), from Proto-Indo-European *kwind-, *kwint- (“bright”), equivalent to white +‎ -en. Cognate with Icelandic hvítna (“to whiten”), Swedish vitna, hvitna (“to whiten”), Danish hvidne (“to whiten”). Compare Old English hwītian (“to whiten, become white, be white, make white”). === Pronunciation === IPA(key): /ˈ(h)waɪ̯.tən/, [ˈ(h)waɪ̯tn̩], [ˈ(h)waɪ̯ʔn̩] Rhymes: -aɪtən === Verb === whiten (third-person singular simple present whitens, present participle whitening, simple past and past participle whitened) (ergative) (To cause) to become white or whiter; to bleach or blanch. (cryptography) To increase the security of an iterated block cipher by steps that combine the data with portions of the key. (statistics) To normalize data so that the covariance matrix becomes the identity matrix; i.e., to remove correlations so each variable has unit variance. ==== Derived terms ==== prewhiten ==== Translations ====