attenuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.
to attenuate desire.
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to make thin; make slender or fine.
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Bacteriology, Immunology. to render less virulent, as a strain of pathogenic virus or bacterium.
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Electronics. to decrease the amplitude of (an electronic signal).
A splitter will attenuate your output.
verb (used without object)
adjective
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weakened; diminishing.
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Botany. tapering gradually to a narrow extremity.
verb
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to weaken or become weak; reduce in size, strength, density, or value
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to make or become thin or fine; extend
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(tr) to make (a pathogenic bacterium, virus, etc) less virulent, as by culture in special media or exposure to heat
adjective
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diluted, weakened, slender, or reduced
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botany tapering gradually to a point
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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attenuatesimple
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attenuatessimple
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have attenuatedperfect
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has attenuatedperfect
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am attenuatingprogressive
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are attenuatingprogressive
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is attenuatingprogressive
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have been attenuatingperfect progressive
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has been attenuatingperfect progressive
Past
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attenuatedsimple
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had attenuatedperfect
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was attenuatingprogressive
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were attenuatingprogressive
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had been attenuatingperfect progressive
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."
Vocabulary lists containing attenuate
30 GRE Words Beginning with "A"
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Hidden Figures
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A Streetcar Named Desire
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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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
