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Tenuous   /tˈɛnjəwəs/   Listen
Tenuous

adjective
1.
Having thin consistency.
2.
Very thin in gauge or diameter.
3.
Lacking substance or significance.  Synonyms: flimsy, fragile, slight, thin.  "A tenuous argument" , "A thin plot" , "A fragile claim to fame"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tenuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... argues convincingly that this was an independent Roman development without a prototype on the Greek stage and neatly refutes Weise and LeGrand by proving that there are no extant Greek fragments sufficient to furnish a ground for any but the most tenuous argument. Above all, he correctly interprets the poet's aim with the dictum: "Praeterquam quod hac persona optime utitur ad actionem bene continuandam id maxime spectat ut per eam spectatorum risum captet." And this from a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... Master gave no answer, but signaled Auchincloss in the engine-room for full speed. Now a subtle tremor possessed the vast fabric, mistress of the upper spaces and the night. The close-compacted lights beneath commenced to sprinkle out into tenuous dots. The tiny blazing fringe of Coney burned a moment very far below, then slid away, under the glass flooring. Still heading sharply upward, with altimeter needle steadily mounting, with the cold becoming ever greater, the liner flung herself out boldly over the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... people (give or take a meaningless hundred million) lived on the planet Earth when the war began. Now, with the tenuous thread of civilization burned away, most of those who were not killed by the fighting itself succumbed inexorably ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova

... linked eastern Galicia with Poland, but made the bonds extremely tenuous, so that they might be severed at any moment without involving profound changes in either country, and by this arrangement, which introduced the provisional into the definitive, a broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation and revolt was encouraged ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... stipitate, nodding; the calyculus variable, generally prominent, more or less distinctly marked by fine, delicate radiating venules, the margin denticulate, the teeth numerous and slender, supporting the well-defined globose net; network made up of very tenuous threads, forming rather small irregular brownish nodules and showing only here and there a free extremity; stipe generally short, two or three times the diameter of the sporangium, sometimes longer, tapering upward, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... eternally in the sky to wrap them forever in its feeble, dying light; that the river should be endless, and the boat float on and on until, overwhelmed by so much love, they should breathe the last gasp of life away in a kiss as tenuous as a sigh. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... bell came more slowly. The humming departed from the air. The window panes, the glass of the bookcase, the tumblers on the table, ceased to rattle and gave off only a tenuous tinkling. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... and more subtle forms of Matter of the existence of which modern science is but now recognizing, the phenomena of Radiant Matter, in its phases of radium, etc., belonging to the lower sub-division of this Minor Plane. The Plane of Matter (C) comprises forms of the most subtle and tenuous Matter, the existence of which is not suspected by ordinary scientists. The Plane of Ethereal Substance comprises that which science speaks of as "The Ether", a substance of extreme tenuity and elasticity, pervading all Universal Space, and acting as a medium for the transmission ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... down by the marsh, where the gray slaves glean, The hemp sprouts up, and the earth is seen Veiled with a tenuous mist of green. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... Japanese beliefs prove themselves reasonable. The profound difference between old-fashioned Western thought and Eastern thought in this regard is, that for the Buddhist the conventional soul—the single, tenuous, tremulous, transparent inner man, or ghost—does not exist. The Oriental Ego is not individual. Nor is it even a definitely numbered multiple like the Gnostic soul. It is an aggregate or composite of inconceivable complexity,—the concentrated sum of the creative thinking of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... hadn't left Eastlake, broken wide open his home, on account of Savina. This, he again insisted, would have happened independently of her; his life in Eastlake had broken up of its own accord; its elements had been too tenuous for the withstanding any longer of the stress of existence. But, he was forced to add, the collapse had been hastened by his knowledge of Savina. And this brought him to the examination of what, at bottom, she meant to him. What was her significance, her bulk, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... there for the sake of a certain tree upon which her eyes now rested. It had all the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves were slender and fragile, half gold with autumn, half green, but so tenuous that the dark branches made a pattern of subtle beauty against the sky. The hand of a draughtsman could not have fashioned it with a more excellent skill. But now Margaret could take no pleasure in its grace. She felt ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham



Words linked to "Tenuous" :   tenuity, slight, insignificant, thin, unimportant, fragile, flimsy



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