Rarefy vs Attenuate - What's the difference?
rarefy | attenuate |
To make rare, thin, porous, or less dense
To expand or enlarge without adding any new portion of matter to.
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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As verbs the difference between rarefy and attenuate
is that rarefy is to make rare, thin, porous, or less dense while attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.As a adjective attenuate is
(botany|of leaves) gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.rarefy
English
Alternative forms
* rarifyVerb
(en-verb)Synonyms
* stretchAntonyms
* condenseattenuate
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."
