ATTENUATE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Attenuate

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verb

Attenuate v. t. (past & past part. attenuated; pres. part. attenuating)

To make thin or slender, as by mechanical or chemical action upon inanimate objects, or by the effects of starvation, disease, etc., upon living bodies.

To make thin or less consistent; to render less viscid or dense; to rarefy. Specifically: To subtilize, as the humors of the body, or to break them into finer parts.

To lessen the amount, force, or value of; to make less complex; to weaken. "To undersell our rivals... has led the manufacturer to... attenuate his processes, in the allotment of tasks, to an extreme point." "We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagerness."

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Etymology of 'Attenuate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Attenuate" Quotes from Famous Books

... but after we had disposed of him we came to the book, which I was obliged to confess I had already rushed through. It was from this moment—the moment at which my terrible impression of it had blinked out at his anxious query—that the image of his scared face was to abide with me. I couldn't attenuate then—the cat was out of the bag; but later, each of the next times, I did, I acknowledge, attenuate. We all did religiously, so far as was possible; we cast ingenious ambiguities over the strong places, ...

— Embarrassments • Henry James

... Margaret, who apparently had a secret fancy for him. He was in his twenty-fourth year, prepossessing, and extremely brave. (1) There was certainly a great disproportion of age between him and Margaret, but this must have served to increase rather than attenuate her passion. She herself was already thirty-five, and judging by a portrait executed about this period, (2) in which she is represented in mourning for the Duke of Alencon, with a long veil falling from her cap, her personal appearance ...

— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

Words linked to "Attenuate" : refine, weakened, reduced, attenuation, attenuator, rarefy, weaken, attenuated, faded, decreased, chemical science