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)
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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
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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
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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:
Firms raise prices, lower prices, seek this way and that to attenuate the competitive forces that drive every business relentlessly toward profitlessness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 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
Until now, structures with isotropic porosity have been applied, but these have the drawback that they exponentially attenuate the incident solar radiation as it travels into the reactor.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2023
We therefore believe that sleep and dreams serve to attenuate negative emotions and that this process is dysfunctional in people with depression.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 5, 2023
Stem smooth and glaucous, 6–10° high; leaves elongated-lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, taper-pointed, sharply serrate or denticulate, acute or attenuate at base, petioled, often whiter and finely pubescent beneath; scales lance-awl-shaped, slightly ciliate.—Dry plains, Ohio to Dak.,
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
This creates a soft halo that attenuates the contrast between the light source and the surrounding darkness.
From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2017
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
They will test the theocracy to see whether the war has attenuated its strength.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 19, 2026
It’s way too attenuated to fit into the language of the statute, because the tariffs don’t actually “deal with” this threat of fentanyl.
From Slate ● May 29, 2025
Anolik is less charitable about Babitz’s subsequent work, which she considers to be attenuated and strained, lacking the buzzy exuberance of “Slow Days, Fast Company.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2024
The live attenuated virus strains were originally developed as a vaccine by Professor Ooi Eng Eong's group from Duke-NUS' Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Programme.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 8, 2024
In Pascal’s account of why the mercury does not descend in the Torricellian tube the formal and material causes are so attenuated as to be uninteresting, and the final cause has disappeared completely.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
What he finds is a conflict pitting human progress, and its attenuating battle for power and domination, against nature.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
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
"Taken together, our findings reveal the broad influence retinoic acid has in attenuating vitally important immune responses to cancer," said Kang.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 16, 2026
“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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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
