dense

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle French dense, from Latin dēnsus, from Proto-Indo-European *dens- (thick, dense).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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dense (comparative denser, superlative densest)

  1. Having relatively high density.
    Synonym: solid
  2. Compact; crowded together.
    Synonyms: compact, crowded, packed; see also Thesaurus:compact
    Antonyms: diffuse; see also Thesaurus:diffuse
  3. Thick; difficult to penetrate.
    Synonyms: thick, solid
    Antonym: thin
    • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.
  4. Opaque; allowing little light to pass through.
    Synonyms: cloudy, opaque; see also Thesaurus:opaque
    Antonyms: clear, diaphanous, see-through, translucent, transparent; see also Thesaurus:transparent, Thesaurus:translucent
  5. Obscure, or difficult to understand.
    Synonyms: abstruse, difficult, hard, incomprehensible, obscure, tough; see also Thesaurus:incomprehensible
    Antonyms: clear, comprehensible, easy, simple, straightforward, understandable; see also Thesaurus:comprehensible
  6. (mathematics, topology) Being a subset of a topological space that approximates the space well. See the Wikipedia article on dense sets for a mathematical definition.
    Antonym: meager
  7. Slow to comprehend; of low intelligence. (of a person)
    Synonyms: dumb, slow, stupid, thick; see also Thesaurus:stupid
    Antonyms: bright, canny, intelligent, quick, quick-witted, smart; see also Thesaurus:intelligent
    • 2023 May 16, Cade Metz, “Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
      There are times when systems like GPT-4 seem to mimic human reasoning, but there are also times when they seem terribly dense. “These behaviors are not always consistent,” Ece Kamar, a Microsoft researcher, said.

Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Noun

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dense (plural denses)

  1. A thicket.

Anagrams

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Esperanto

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Etymology

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From densa +‎ -e.

Adverb

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dense

  1. densely

French

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin dēnsus.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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dense (plural denses)

  1. dense
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Further reading

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Italian

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Adjective

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dense f pl

  1. feminine plural of denso

Latin

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Etymology

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From dēnsus (dense, close, frequent) +‎ (adverbial suffix).

Pronunciation

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Adverb

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dēnsē (comparative dēnsius, superlative dēnsissimē)

  1. closely, in rapid succession
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References

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  • dense”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • dense”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • dense in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

Spanish

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Verb

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dense

  1. third-person plural imperative of dar combined with se