Ameliorate vs Attenuate - What's the difference?
ameliorate | attenuate |
To make better, to improve.
* Macaulay
To reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.
* 1874 , , Far From the Madding Crowd , ch. 40:
To make thinner, as by physically reshaping, starving, or decaying.
* 1899 , , His New Mittens , ch. 4:
* 1906 , , The Malefactor , ch. 1:
To weaken.
* Coleridge
* Sir F. Palgrave
To rarefy.
* 1901 , , The First Men in the Moon , ch. 23:
(medicine) To reduce the virulence of a bacteria or virus.
(electronics) To reduce the amplitude of an electrical signal.
(botany, of leaves) Gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.
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In transitive terms the difference between ameliorate and attenuate
is that ameliorate is to make better, to improve while attenuate is to rarefy.As an adjective attenuate is
gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.ameliorate
English
Verb
(ameliorat)- They offered some compromises in an effort to ameliorate the situation.
- In every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own condition.
Synonyms
* See alsoAntonyms
* deteriorate * worsenattenuate
English
Verb
(attenuat)- A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone.
- Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.
- Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.
- The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts.
- We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagreness.
- "It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly."