attenuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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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)
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
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have been attenuatingperfect progressive
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has been attenuatingperfect progressive
Past
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attenuatedsimple
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had attenuatedperfect
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was attenuatingprogressive
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were attenuatingprogressive
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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
The reader of the following chapters must decide for himself whether the writer of them was carefully manipulating and colouring circumstances he wished to attenuate.
From The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi Volume the Second by Gozzi, Count Carlo
"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
He hurries or he protracts—he swells notes as of an organ, he attenuates them as of a flute.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845 by Various
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
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 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
These cavities, called micro-ring resonators, are intricately designed to resonate at specific frequencies, selectively amplifying the desired wavelengths while attenuating others, thereby achieving enhanced coherence in the emitted light.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 8, 2023
“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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
