dense

American  

[dens] / dɛns /

adjective

denser, densest

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.

---

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

---

Other Word Forms

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

Etymology

Origin of dense

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

Example Sentences

Video taken near Scholes International Airport in Galveston showed rescuers including a dive team working in dense fog.

From BBC

An AFP team in Longnan saw rows of large rare earths processing plants in an industrial district adjacent to that dense smattering of extraction sites.

From Barron's

Soft, crisp, chewy, dense, shattering, pully: the way these sensations play against one another is often what makes a dish feel complete.

From Salon

Crowds in the square surrounding the Baroque masterpiece are often so dense that it is hard to get a proper look.

From Barron's

With time, tents gave way to concrete buildings, with the football field representing one of the few open spaces in the camp's dense patchwork.

From Barron's

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid