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)
-
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
-
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
-
have been attenuatingperfect progressive
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has been attenuatingperfect progressive
Past
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attenuatedsimple
-
had attenuatedperfect
-
was attenuatingprogressive
-
were attenuatingprogressive
-
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
"Seismic waves attenuate rapidly for distances away from the source, and therefore have limited resolution when they reach the depths of interest."
From Science Daily ● May 8, 2024
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
Leaves as in the last, but paler and thinner; spikes long and thin, attenuate at the apex; sepals oblong, acutely carinate; capsules cylindraceous-oblong, circumscissile much below the middle, 4–9-seeded; seeds oval-oblong, not reticulated.
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
Jane’s quest attenuates as the novel grinds on, months and years falling around her like bodies in a plague year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2021
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
Sloth is the weight of matter, in itself inert, within us, and this sloth, while it professes to preserve us by economizing our forces, in reality attenuates us and reduces us to nothing.
From Tragic Sense Of Life by J. E. Crawford (John Ernest Crawford) Flitch
Instead, it’s worth looking at things that seem much more attenuated from the facts of this concrete case.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
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
The measles virus is attenuated in the MMR vaccine, meaning that it has been altered to produce the appropriate immune response without triggering the disease itself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2025
The team had also found in their previous work, that eating high-fat foods attenuated cerebral oxygenation in the pre-frontal cortex, during stress.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 18, 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
Mangroves offer coastal protection by preventing coastal erosion and attenuating waves moving to the coast.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 2, 2023
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
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