- Lightening is the present participle of the verb lighten.
- Lightning is the electrical discharge that happens during storms.
It’s rare that dropping the letter E can turn a word from mundane to frightening. But that’s what happens when you drop the E from lightening. It stops making things lighter and brighter and it turns into a natural phenomenon many people find scary.
The Difference Between Lightening and Lightning
Lightening with an “e” is the present participle of the verb lighten. We use the verb lighten in two senses—one has to do with color and the other refers to weight. When we talk about changing the appearance of something by giving it a lighter color, we can say we are lightening it:
In the other sense, we can use the verb lighten to say that we are making something less heavy, literally or figuratively:
Lightning is the electrical discharge that happens during an electrical storm. Lightning can occur in a single cloud, between two clouds, or between a cloud and the ground, and if you want to use it in a sentence, you can do it like this:
Lightning vs. Lightening Examples
