dense

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

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): /dɛns/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛns

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, →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.

• (antonym(s) of “crowded together”): diffuse, few and far between (of things as opposed to one thing), scattered, sparse, rarefied (scientific, to describe gases)

dense (plural denses)

1. A thicket.

• Denes, Edens, Sneed, denes, edens, needs, sende, sneed

From densa +‎ -e.

dense

1. densely

Borrowed from Latin dēnsus.

• IPA^(key): /dɑ̃s/

• audio

  (file)

dense (plural denses)

1. dense

• condenser
• densité

• “dense”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

dense f pl

1. feminine plural of denso

From dēnsus (“dense, close, frequent”) +‎ -ē (adverbial suffix).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈden.seː/, [ˈd̪ẽːs̠eː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈden.se/, [ˈd̪ɛnse]

dēnsē (comparative dēnsius, superlative dēnsissimē)

1. closely, in rapid succession

• “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.

dense

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