lowering

The act of something being lowered.

Speeds up to 90 m.p.h. were permitted and achieved on the regular daily main line services, but as the pressure of external demands imposed on the railways by the needs of war increased it became necessary to accept handicaps which resulted in a general lowering of standards of track conditions.

A sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes lower.

Dark and menacing.

The morning had been intensely hot, with but little wind; and the lowering gloomy aspect of the clouds appeared to indicate the approach of one of those sudden gales peculiar to tropical climates, and which, although of short duration, are generally productive of mischief.

The wide prospect up stream was grey and lowering, the long still-distant waterfront of Dundee, and the Fife shore were alike colourless, and there was ample evidence of rough weather not far ahead.

That lowers or frowns.

One glance sufficed to identify the intruder, for none but he could boast of such a dark, lowering countenance ; and all exclaimed in mingled wonder and terror at his unwonted presence in those sunlit regions:

A kind of dark pallor lent him a ghostly appearance in the uncertain light, an effect heightened by the satanic darkness of his lowering brows.

Lurking, skulking, menacing.

Klimov put on his greatcoat mechanically and left the train, and he felt as though it were not himself walking, but some one else, a stranger, and he felt that he was accompanied by the heat of the train, his thirst, and the ominous, lowering figures which all night long had prevented his sleeping.

They might have stayed until dusk, undisturbed by Schmidt's casual customers, had it not been for the entrance of three grimy and lowering men.

Alternative form of louring.