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Attenuate vs Mediate - What's the difference?

attenuate | mediate |

As adjectives the difference between attenuate and mediate

is that attenuate is (botany|of leaves) gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base while mediate is .

As a verb attenuate

is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.

attenuate

English

Verb

(attenuat)
  • To reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.
  • * 1874 , , Far From the Madding Crowd , ch. 40:
  • A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone.
  • To make thinner, as by physically reshaping, starving, or decaying.
  • * 1899 , , His New Mittens , ch. 4:
  • Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.
  • * 1906 , , The Malefactor , ch. 1:
  • Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.
  • To weaken.
  • * Coleridge
  • The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts.
  • * Sir F. Palgrave
  • We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagreness.
  • To rarefy.
  • * 1901 , , The First Men in the Moon , ch. 23:
  • "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."
  • (medicine) To reduce the virulence of a bacteria or virus.
  • (electronics) To reduce the amplitude of an electrical signal.
  • Antonyms

    * amplify (electronics)

    Derived terms

    * attenuation * attenuable

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (botany, of leaves) Gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.
  • ----

    mediate

    English

    Verb

    (mediat)
  • To resolve differences, or to bring about a settlement, between conflicting parties.
  • To intervene between conflicting parties in order to resolve differences or bring about a settlement.
  • To divide into two equal parts.
  • (Holder)
  • To act as an intermediary causal or communicative agent; convey
  • Adjective

  • Acting through a mediating agency.
  • * (Oliver Sacks)
  • Vygotsky saw the development of language and mental powers as neither learned, in the ordinary way, nor emerging epigenetically, but as being social and mediate in nature, as arising from the interaction of adult and child, and as internalizing the cultural instrument of language for the processes of thought.
  • Intermediate between extremes.
  • (Prior)
  • Gained or effected by a medium or condition.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • * Sir W. Hamilton
  • An act of mediate knowledge is complex.

    Derived terms

    * mediately