dense

[ dens ]

adjective

, dens·er, dens·est.

1. having the component parts closely compacted together; crowded or compact:

   a dense forest;

   dense population.

   Synonyms: impenetrable, teeming

2. stupid; slow-witted; dull.
3. intense; extreme:

   dense ignorance.

4. relatively opaque; transmitting little light, as a photographic negative, optical glass, or color.
5. difficult to understand or follow because of being closely packed with ideas or complexities of style:

   a dense philosophical essay.

6. Mathematics. of or relating to a subset of a topological space in which every neighborhood of every point in the space contains at least one point of the subset.

dense

/ dɛns /

adjective

1. thickly crowded or closely set

   a dense crowd

2. thick; impenetrable

   a dense fog

3. physics having a high density
4. stupid; dull; obtuse
5. (of a photographic negative) having many dark or exposed areas
6. (of an optical glass, colour, etc) transmitting little or no light

Derived Forms

• ˈdensely, adverb
• ˈdenseness, noun

Other Words From

• densely adverb
• denseness noun
• non·denseness noun
• super·dense adjective
• ultra·dense adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of dense¹

First recorded in 1590–1600; from Latin dēnsus “thick”; cognate with Greek dasýs

Word History and Origins

Origin of dense¹

C15: from Latin densus thick; related to Greek dasus thickly covered with hair or leaves

Example Sentences

When that muscle tissue is replaced by dense scar tissue with little blood circulation, the infarcted heart loses contractile power, leading to heart enlargement, progressive loss of pumping ability, increased chance of ventricular arrhythmias and clinical end-stage heart failure.

From Science Daily

PBHs would have much less mass than the stellar black holes later formed by dying stars, but they would still be extremely dense, like the mass of a mountain compacted into an area the size of an atom.

From Science Daily

"Think of a swift or a swallow or a bird like an albatross that flies over the ocean. They have really pointy wings that allow them to fly really well, whereas birds in dense tropical rainforests are not flying these large distances, so they have rounded wings because they're just moving in their local habitat patches."

From Science Daily

Proteins have to commute in dense traffic in the cell, traveling from where they are created to where they work.

From Science Daily

"The platform's PSF engineering enables 3D imaging of single molecules, while deep learning handles dense emitter conditions which conventional algorithms have trouble with, which significantly improves the acquisition speed," said Saliba.

From Science Daily

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid