attenuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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attenuates,
present (3rd person singular)
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attenuated,
past participle, past
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attenuating
present participle
-
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)
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attenuates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
attenuated,
past participle, past
-
attenuating
present participle
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
-
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:
It’s in the way the steering hydraulics softly attenuate kickback at full lock.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 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
So it wouldn't be surprising if the relationship between natural harbors and democracy begins to attenuate toward the end of the 20th century.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2023
Without heart-shaped petioled leaves, the radical and lower all acute or attenuate at base; not glandular nor viscid, nor silky-canescent.
From The Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States Including the District East of the Mississippi and North of North Carolina and Tennessee by Asa Gray
"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
Daniel’s production honors this to a degree, but the ensemble casting attenuates the effect.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2023
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
By progressive generalisation and abstraction, reasoning attenuates the primitive metaphor; it wears it down as on a grindstone.
From Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion based on Psychology and History by Auguste Sabatier
But the goal has been somewhat attenuated lately by media fragmentation, with today’s nerds satisfying their curiosity on forums largely disconnected from mainstream audiences.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 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 live attenuated virus strains were originally developed as a vaccine by Professor Ooi Eng Eong's group from Duke-NUS' Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Programme.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 8, 2024
Jacob strolled to a nearby driftwood tree that had its roots sticking out like the attenuated legs of a huge, pale spider.
From "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
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
With this setup, the experts have succeeded in significantly reducing heat transfer through sensors and electronics, and in attenuating interference signals and noise with several innovations.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 17, 2024
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.
