dense

American  

[dens] / dɛns /

adjective

• denser,
  comparative
• densest
  superlative

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.

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dense British  

/ 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

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• denseness
  noun
• nondenseness
  noun
• superdense
  adjective
• ultradense
  adjective
• densely
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Adjectives

• denser
  comparative
• densest
  superlative

Etymology

Origin of dense

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

Explanation

When woods are dense, the trees grow close together. When fog is dense, you can't see through it. And if someone calls you dense, they think nothing can get into your thick skull. Dense comes from the Latin densus which means thick and cloudy. In general, the word means packed tight and gives the sense that something is difficult to get through. Text can be dense in two different ways: when the words are packed closely together on the page, and when the text is filled with big words and complicated thoughts. Either way, reading dense text is just no fun.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dense denser densest

He now lives on Indian Creek island behind dense hedges that prevent even his wealthy neighbors from peering into his estate—the only home like that on the island, one club member said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

At the time, rescuers said he was in a "very isolated and hard-to-access mountain area" and the weather conditions were extremely severe with strong winds, heavy snowfall, and dense fog.

From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026

The east side of the fire — located in dense wilderness — is most active and firefighters are trying to find safe ways to get it under control, officials said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

Similar effects already help stabilize dense objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars and can reproduce the inflationary expansion phase.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

When we reach the bluff, Babs points to a patch of dense thickets surrounding its base.

From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy

That stronger clustering might also appear to explain observations suggesting that the Universe contains denser structures than predicted.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 2, 2026

The denser it is, the more dehydrated you are, generally.

From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026

Fellow economists Marina Gertsberg, Ekaterina Volkova and I found that the disgraced financier effectively wired corporate America into a denser, more tightly interconnected network.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2026

Without frequent fire to clear out the understory of a forest, California woodlands have grown five to six times denser.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026

The universe as a whole would have continued expanding and cooling, but in regions that were slightly denser than average, the expansion would have been slowed down by the extra gravitational attraction.

From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking

We walk Sham Shui Po, once among the city’s densest working-class food neighborhoods.

From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2026

Black ones hold crude oil as well as the "heaviest" or densest products like bitumen.

From Barron's ● Apr. 26, 2026

"You have the second densest country in the world, that has virtually uncongested streets," Harvard economist Edward Glaeser said of the city-state.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

It’s a shame, because MacArthur Park is the backyard for one of the densest neighborhoods in the United States, a modern-day Lower East Side of immigrants and their children.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026

The trail cut away from the lake through the densest part of the forest.

From "Winger" by Andrew Smith

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid