concentration

American  

[kon-suhn-trey-shuhn] / ˌkɒn sənˈtreɪ ʃən /

noun

• concentrations
  plural

1. the act of concentrating; the state of being concentrated.

2. exclusive attention to one object; close mental application.

3. something concentrated.

   a concentration of stars.

4. Military.

   1. the assembling of military or naval forces in a particular area in preparation for further operations.

   2. a specified intensity and duration of artillery fire placed on a small area.

5. the focusing of a student's academic program on advanced study in a specific subject or field.

6. Chemistry. (in a solution) a measure of the amount of dissolved substance contained per unit of volume.

7. Also called memory.  Cards. a game in which all 52 cards are spread out face down on the table and each player in turn exposes two cards at a time and replaces them face down if they do not constitute a pair, the object being to take the most pairs by remembering the location of the cards previously exposed.

---

concentration British  

/ ˌkɒnsənˈtreɪʃən /

noun

1. intense mental application; complete attention

2. the act or process of concentrating

3. something that is concentrated

4.  c.  the strength of a solution, esp the amount of dissolved substance in a given volume of solvent, usually expressed in moles per cubic metre or cubic decimetre (litre)

5. the process of increasing the concentration of a solution

6. military

   1. the act of bringing together military forces

   2. the application of fire from a number of weapons against a target

7. economics the degree to which the output or employment in an industry is accounted for by only a few firms

8. another name (esp US) for Pelmanism

---

concentration Scientific  

/ kŏn′sən-trā′shən /

1. The amount of a particular substance in a given amount of another substance, especially a solution or mixture.

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• hyperconcentration
  noun
• nonconcentration
  noun
• overconcentration
  noun
• preconcentration
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• concentrations
  plural

Etymology

Origin of concentration

First recorded in 1625–35; concentr(ic) + -ation

Explanation

If you have great powers of concentration, that means you're able to focus all your attention on the matter at hand. Concentration can also refer to something that's clustered together or to the density or strength of a solution. A concentration of people means that there are many of them in one area. Your city may have a concentration of artists living in the warehouses by the river. A high concentration of a substance in a solution means that there's a lot of it relative to the volume: the Great Salt Lake has very few fish because of the high concentration of salt. To say that you have good concentration skills means that you pay attention well.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

concentration concentrations

Growing up in Stockton, where a high concentration of braceros tended fields, Huerta said witnessing the workers’ subpar conditions drove her early activism.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026

“We think the firm’s concentration may also limit its ability to penetrate markets as deeply as more diversified peers like McDonald’s,” Felhandler said.

From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026

But the latest concentration of AI investment in Silicon Valley is particularly extreme, said Enrico Moretti, a University of California at Berkeley economist who studies the geography of jobs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026

Perhaps the drop disrupted his concentration, because the wicket-taking delivery from Usman was innocuous.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

Salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water, around twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the concentration of salt and other minerals.

From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong

Kuwait hosts one of the region's largest concentrations of American troops, with US forces active in airfields, bases and training grounds.

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

Torfaen council said it was unaware of the EU data but its own air quality monitoring showed "elevated particulate concentrations".

From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026

Blood testing also revealed unusually high concentrations of nitrite and nitrate.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026

In this case, matter in the young Universe would have been distributed in unusually strong concentrations.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

Michael Burry focused, abstractly, on the structure of the loans, and bet on pools with high concentrations of the types that he believed were designed to fail.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Related Words

• absorption
• combination
• consolidation