The Collaborative International Dictionary
Attenuate \At*ten"u*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Attenuated; p. pr. & vb. n. Attenuating.] [L. attenuatus, p. p. of attenuare; ad + tenuare to make thin, tenuis thin. See Thin.]
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.
--I. Taylor.We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagerness.
--Sir F. Palgrave.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of attenuate English)
Usage examples of "attenuating".
Stung to the quick by an indiscretion which, as I did not yet know women thoroughly, seemed to me without example, I cast all fears of displeasing to the winds, related the adventure with all the warmth of an impassioned poet, and without disguising or attenuating in the least the desires which the charms of the Greek beauty had inspired me with.
Still, leaping into warp too close to anything larger than you were always ran the risk of attenuating your mass across distances stretching into the infinite, and while that was not something Kira had ever seen or even really heard described, it was something she endeavored to avoid whenever given the opportunity.
All you can do is reduce the static from the wormhole by attenuating all frequencies except the central band.
I inadvertently nudged the color controls of a holo tank, and brought part of the low-temperature area into focus, revealing a many-armed ovoid of constantly changing primary hues, the arms attenuating and vanishing: I have observed some of these arms reach ten thousand miles in length, and I have no idea what limits apply to their size.
The hand was glowing a pale white, its form flickering, the fingers lengthening and attenuating, appearing to ripple as in a graceful dance.
The roar of the ferry's exhaust followed a moment later, attenuating rapidly like that of an aircraft making a low-level pass.
All his senses were covered by a screen that trembled through white and red, attenuating the sights and sounds of the world.
He felt the walls of the cosmos attenuating, and for a moment, sensed an infinite number of Pharauns conjuring in adjacent realities, receding away from him like reflections in a mirror, growing subtly less and less like himself with each step.
Jacen had become the dismantling void that was drawing Onimi into a slender thread, attenuating him to the point of infinite smallness.
He felt the walls of the cosmos attenuating, and for a moment, sensed an infinite number of Pharaun’s conjuring in adjacent realities, receding away from him like reflections in a mirror, growing subtly less and less like himself with each step.
It can be amplifying rather than attenuating, and it can have an arbitrarily large additive component.
The left disc is in an attenuating atmosphere (compared to the default).
It was Miles the Magician, wearing, or attenuating to wear, the necessary nrons.