ATTENUATE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Attenuate

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verb

Attenuate v. t. (past & past part. attenuated; pres. part. attenuating)

To make thin or slender, as by mechanical or chemical action upon inanimate objects, or by the effects of starvation, disease, etc., upon living bodies.

To make thin or less consistent; to render less viscid or dense; to rarefy. Specifically: To subtilize, as the humors of the body, or to break them into finer parts.

To lessen the amount, force, or value of; to make less complex; to weaken. "To undersell our rivals... has led the manufacturer to... attenuate his processes, in the allotment of tasks, to an extreme point." "We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagerness."

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Etymology of 'Attenuate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Attenuate" Quotes from Famous Books

... said, in his letter of thanks to General Oudinot: 'The victory of the French arms is won over the enemies of human society.' Yes! gentlemen, such will be the judgment of impartial history; and it will be one of the brightest glories of France and the nineteenth century. You will not attenuate, tarnish, eclipse this glory by plunging into a mass of contradictions, complications, and inextricable inconsistency. Know you what would dim for ever the lustre of the French flag? It would be to set it in opposition ...

— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... which otherwise he might never have touched so closely. He learned to know all their strange and naive humours, their ignorance and muddlement. From them he realised those strong and elemental passions which finer folk attenuate or disguise. He acquired a stock of sinewy and home-coming Saxon phrase, which often stood him in good stead, and which forms no small factor in his vast eloquence. He is manifestly a man who forgot nothing. In after days he mingled with wits and ...

— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

Words linked to "Attenuate" : weaken, attenuated, chemistry, refine, rarefy, chemical science, weakened, decreased, attenuation