Impair vs Attenuate - What's the difference?
impair | attenuate |
To weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on.
(archaic) To grow worse; to deteriorate.
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 lang=en terms the difference between impair and attenuate
is that impair is to weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on while attenuate is to rarefy.As verbs the difference between impair and attenuate
is that impair is to weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on while attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.As adjectives the difference between impair and attenuate
is that impair is (obsolete) not fit or appropriate while attenuate is (botany|of leaves) gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.impair
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (qualifier)Verb
(en verb)- (Milton)
Derived terms
* (l)External links
* * * ----attenuate
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."