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attenuate

American  
[uh-ten-yoo-eyt, uh-ten-yoo-it, -eyt] / əˈtɛn juˌeɪt, əˈtɛn ju ɪt, -ˌeɪt /

verb (used with object)

attenuates, present (3rd person singular) attenuated, past participle, past attenuating present participle
  1. to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.

    to attenuate desire.

  2. to make thin; make slender or fine.

  3. Bacteriology, Immunology. to render less virulent, as a strain of pathogenic virus or bacterium.

  4. Electronics. to decrease the amplitude of (an electronic signal).

    A splitter will attenuate your output.


verb (used without object)

attenuates, present (3rd person singular) attenuated, past participle, past attenuating present participle
  1. to become thin, fine, or weak; lessen.

    Over the years, my anger at my family attenuated and I was able to acknowledge the strengths they had given me.

adjective

  1. weakened; diminishing.

  2. Botany. tapering gradually to a narrow extremity.

attenuate British  

verb

  1. to weaken or become weak; reduce in size, strength, density, or value

  2. to make or become thin or fine; extend

  3. (tr) to make (a pathogenic bacterium, virus, etc) less virulent, as by culture in special media or exposure to heat

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

adjective

  1. diluted, weakened, slender, or reduced

  2. botany tapering gradually to a point

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of attenuate

First recorded in 1520–30; from Latin attenuātus (past participle of attenuāre “to make thin, reduce”); see at-, tenuis, -ate 1

Explanation

Attenuate is a verb that means to make or become weaker. The effects of aging may be attenuated by exercise — or by drinking from the fountain of youth. The versatile word attenuate denotes a weakening in amount, intensity, or value. As a verb, attenuate is usually transitive, meaning it needs an object to be complete, such as in the sentence: "This tanning process tends to attenuate the deer hide, making it softer." The word can be intransitive in past tense, as in "The rain attenuated, ending the storm." And it can even be used as an adjective to describe something weakened: "Even an attenuated solution will remove the stain."

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Vocabulary lists containing attenuate

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The rigid roof panel helps attenuate the little engine’s effortful ringadingding, which loses its charm after hour four or so.

From The Wall Street Journal May 23, 2026

He recognized that if the United States were to have any meaningful relationship with Latin America, we needed to attenuate our colonialism, so he pushed through the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 29, 2024

The researchers were able to show that zooplankton species that are tolerant to oxygen deficiency consume sinking particles and thus attenuate the export fluxes of carbon to the deep sea.

From Science Daily Dec. 8, 2023

We therefore believe that sleep and dreams serve to attenuate negative emotions and that this process is dysfunctional in people with depression.

From Scientific American Jun. 5, 2023

Ovary.—With its two cells attenuate into the slender styles.

From The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits by Parsons, Mary Elizabeth

"Sound attenuates with distance, so at one metre away, the amplitude is around 108 decibels."

From BBC Feb. 26, 2024

Based on this, they hypothesized that DOP activation by KNT-127 suppresses glutamatergic transmission and attenuates PL-BLA-mediated anxiety-like behavior.

From Science Daily Feb. 22, 2024

Jane’s quest attenuates as the novel grinds on, months and years falling around her like bodies in a plague year.

From Los Angeles Times Mar. 30, 2021

The challenge for any organism is to keep these rates low, and having two sexes, Dr. Lane reasons, in which only one sex passes its mitochondria along to offspring, attenuates this issue.

From New York Times Jul. 20, 2015

"It is precisely the same as Fred, who twists, jerks, distorts and attenuates the English language in his magazine work, in order to have bread and ice-cream and jelly cake for his two blooming youngsters."

From The Window at the White Cat by Rinehart, Mary Roberts

During its short-lived rescue attempt, the U.S. military contacted dozens of ships, encouraging them to break out, and offered reassurances that the Navy, using AI-powered drones, has attenuated the risk of sea-mines planted by Iran.

From The Wall Street Journal May 9, 2026

And then Michael is such a craftsman that every part of everything is studied and controlled and carefully attenuated.

From Los Angeles Times Sep. 26, 2025

It’s way too attenuated to fit into the language of the statute, because the tariffs don’t actually “deal with” this threat of fentanyl.

From Slate May 29, 2025

The team had also found in their previous work, that eating high-fat foods attenuated cerebral oxygenation in the pre-frontal cortex, during stress.

From Science Daily Nov. 18, 2024

New Guinea society became attenuated along that island chain.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Far from attacking the root causes of global-warming, activists said, recourse to la clim' was merely attenuating the effects of global-warming.

From BBC Jun. 24, 2026

These cavities, called micro-ring resonators, are intricately designed to resonate at specific frequencies, selectively amplifying the desired wavelengths while attenuating others, thereby achieving enhanced coherence in the emitted light.

From Science Daily Dec. 8, 2023

Williams’s affecting intensity gives the movie regular shocking jolts of passion, attenuating its otherwise overly easy, overly familiar flow.

From New York Times Sep. 16, 2022

“Our data confirm that the benefits of vaccination include attenuating disease severity in breakthrough cases,” Barchuk says.

From Science Magazine Aug. 26, 2021

This suggested that phosphorus would be a better carrier of therapeutic radiation than radio-sodium, since the latter distributes itself all through the body as salt, attenuating its effect.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

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