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Enhance vs Magnify - What's the difference?

enhance | magnify |

As verbs the difference between enhance and magnify

is that enhance is to lift, raise up while magnify is to praise, glorify (someone or something, especially god).

enhance

English

Alternative forms

* inhance * enhaunce * inhaunce

Verb

(enhanc)
  • (obsolete) To lift, raise up.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , I.i:
  • nought aghast, his mightie hand enhaunst : / The stroke down from her head vnto her shoulder glaunst.
    (Wyclif Bible)
  • To augment or make something greater.
  • * Southey
  • The reputation of ferocity enhanced the value of their services, in making them feared as well as hated.
  • * 2000 , Mordecai Roshwald, Liberty: Its Meaning and Scope , page 155
  • A hereditary monarch relies on pomp and ceremony, which enhance the respect for the institution
  • To improve something by adding features.
  • * 1986 , Maggie Righetti, Knitting in Plain English , page 192
  • A pom-pom to top off a stocking cap, a fringe to feather the edge of a shawl, tassels to define the points of an afghan, these are just a few of the delightful little goodies that enhance handknit things.
  • To be raised up; to grow larger.
  • A debt enhances rapidly by compound interest.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    magnify

    English

    Verb

  • To praise, glorify (someone or something, especially god).
  • * 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts X:
  • For they herde them speake with tonges, and magnify God.
  • * 1644 , (John Milton), (Aeropagitica) :
  • For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best cov'nant of his fidelity [...].
  • To make (something) larger or more important.
  • * Grew
  • The least error in a small quantitybe proportionately magnified .
  • * {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black), title=Internal Combustion
  • , chapter=2 citation , passage=But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries. By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal. This only magnified the indispensable nature of the oligopolists.}}
  • To make (someone or something) appear greater or more important than it is; to intensify, exaggerate.
  • To make (something) appear larger by means of a lens, magnifying glass, telescope etc.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Catherine Clabby
  • , magazine=(American Scientist), title= Focus on Everything , passage=Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. That’s because the lenses that are excellent at magnifying tiny subjects produce a narrow depth of field. A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that.}}
  • (intransitive, slang, obsolete) To have effect; to be of importance or significance.
  • (Spectator)

    Derived terms

    * magnifier * magnifying glass * magnification