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attenuated

[v. uh-ten-yoo-eyt; adj. uh-ten-yoo-it, -eyt]

Example Sentences Origin

verb (used with object)

to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value: to attenuate desire.

to make thin; make slender or fine.

Bacteriology, Immunology. to render less virulent, as a strain of pathogenic virus or bacterium.

Electronics. to decrease the amplitude of (an electronic signal).

verb (used without object)

to become thin or fine; lessen.

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Attenuated is always a great word to know.

So is lollapalooza. Does it mean:

an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

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adjective

weakened; diminishing.

Botany. tapering gradually to a narrow extremity.

Origin:
1520–30; < Latin attenuātus (past participle of attenuāre to thin, reduce). See at-, tenuis, -ate¹

Related forms

o·ver·at·ten·u·ate, verb (used with object), -at·ed, -at·ing.

sub·at·ten·u·ate, adjective

sub·at·ten·u·at·ed, adjective

un·at·ten·u·at·ed, adjective

un·at·ten·u·at·ed·ly, adverb

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To attenuated

Example Sentences

Studies of an oral live attenuated typhoid vaccine are now under way and appear promising.

Similarly, resource wealth also attenuated the risk of conflict.

As a result, the light of the blue sun is strongly scattered and attenuated.

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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

attenuate

"to make thin, to make less," 1520s, from L. attenuatus, pp. of attenuare "to make thin," from ad- "to" + tenuare "make thin," from tenuis "thin" (see tenet). Related: Attenuating (early 17c.).

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

attenuate at·ten·u·ate (ə-těn'y&oomacr;-āt')
v. at·ten·u·at·ed, at·ten·u·at·ing, at·ten·u·ates

To reduce in force, value, amount, or degree; weaken; diminish.
To make bacteria or viruses less virulent.

adj.
Reduced or weakened, as in strength, value, or virulence.

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Related Words

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Matching Quote

"Emerson said that the "scholar is man thinking." Had Southerners of that era taken seriously the famous lecture entitled "The American Scholar," they might have replied by saying that the gentleman is man talking. The accomplished Christian gentleman of the old South was the shadow, attenuated by evangelical Calvinism, of his Renaissance spiritual ancestor, who had been the creation of the rhetorical tradition, out of Aristotle through Cicero distilled finally by Castiglione. By contrast, the New England sage, embodied in Ralph Waldo Emerson, took seriously what has come to be known since the Industrial Revolution as the life of the mind: an activity a little apart from life, and perhaps leading to the fashionable alienation of the "intellectual" of our time."

-Allen Tate

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