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.

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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

• 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

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

“We’re operating in dense cities where new supply is structurally limited,” she says, and with automation, she believes, Stuf can scale up quickly as demand increases.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 15, 2026

The entire space is dripping in the dense Black L.A.-meets-Egyptology that has become Halsey’s signature.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 14, 2026

The forests are dense and the region's porous borders make it easy for the militants to set up bases and to move across countries without being detected by the security forces.

From BBC • Apr. 9, 2026

Like ordinary black holes, they are incredibly dense, but they could be much smaller in mass.

From Science Daily • Apr. 8, 2026

“It’s a number,” she said, looking at me as though I was dense.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid