Undermine vs Attenuate - What's the difference?
undermine | attenuate |
To dig underneath (something), to make a passage or for destructive or military purposes; to sap.
* 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin 2010, p. 312:
(figuratively) To weaken or work against; to hinder, sabotage.
* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 19, author=Josh Halliday, work=the Guardian
, title= 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 undermine and attenuate
is that undermine is to dig underneath (something), to make a passage or for destructive or military purposes; to sap while attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.As an adjective attenuate is
gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.undermine
English
Verb
(undermin)- Martin, for instance, had on one occasion undermined a tree sacred to old gods, then stood in the path of its fall, but forced it to fall elsewhere by making the sign of the Cross.
Free speech haven or lawless cesspool – can the internet be civilised?, passage=The growing use of social media to spread anger and dissent in the Arab world has been hailed by western governments as one of the chief justifications for a completely unfettered internet. The US is reportedly funding the secret rollout of technology in Iran in an effort to undermine internet censors in the country.}}
Antonyms
* undergirdExternal 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."