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Attenuate vs Subside - What's the difference?

attenuate | subside |

As verbs the difference between attenuate and subside

is that attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree while subside is to sink or fall to the bottom; to settle, as lees.

As an adjective attenuate

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

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.
  • ----

    subside

    English

    Verb

    (subsid)
  • To sink or fall to the bottom; to settle, as lees.
  • To tend downward; to become lower; to descend; to sink.
  • To fall into a state of quiet; to cease to rage; to be calmed; to settle down; to become tranquil; to abate.
  • :
  • *
  • *:Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside , his lids fluttered, then drooped?; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals,.