dense

American  

[dens] / dɛns /

adjective

• denser,
  comparative
• densest
  superlative

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.

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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

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

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

Inflected Forms

Adjectives

• denser
  comparative
• densest
  superlative

Etymology

Origin of dense

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

Explanation

When woods are dense, the trees grow close together. When fog is dense, you can't see through it. And if someone calls you dense, they think nothing can get into your thick skull. Dense comes from the Latin densus which means thick and cloudy. In general, the word means packed tight and gives the sense that something is difficult to get through. Text can be dense in two different ways: when the words are packed closely together on the page, and when the text is filled with big words and complicated thoughts. Either way, reading dense text is just no fun.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dense denser densest

He now lives on Indian Creek island behind dense hedges that prevent even his wealthy neighbors from peering into his estate—the only home like that on the island, one club member said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

At the time, rescuers said he was in a "very isolated and hard-to-access mountain area" and the weather conditions were extremely severe with strong winds, heavy snowfall, and dense fog.

From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026

The feature is usually linked to dense gas absorbing photons in the atmospheres of stars that are a few hundred million years old.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026

The east side of the fire — located in dense wilderness — is most active and firefighters are trying to find safe ways to get it under control, officials said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

When we reach the bluff, Babs points to a patch of dense thickets surrounding its base.

From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy

After the water cools and becomes denser, it sinks and flows southward along the ocean floor.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 28, 2026

The denser it is, the more dehydrated you are, generally.

From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026

Fellow economists Marina Gertsberg, Ekaterina Volkova and I found that the disgraced financier effectively wired corporate America into a denser, more tightly interconnected network.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2026

Without frequent fire to clear out the understory of a forest, California woodlands have grown five to six times denser.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026

All those are direct ways in which plant and animal domestication led to denser human populations by yielding more food than did the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

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

Eco-lodges dot the area, a destination for hikers and boaters to view one of Alaska’s densest populations of brown bears.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

We walk Sham Shui Po, once among the city’s densest working-class food neighborhoods.

From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2026

Black ones hold crude oil as well as the "heaviest" or densest products like bitumen.

From Barron's ● Apr. 26, 2026

"You have the second densest country in the world, that has virtually uncongested streets," Harvard economist Edward Glaeser said of the city-state.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

The earliest and most intensive food production, and the densest populations, of Greater Australia arose in the highland valleys of New Guinea at altitudes between 4,000 and 9,000 feet above sea level.

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

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid