Dense
[dens] or [dɛns]
Definition
(adj.) slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity; 'so dense he never understands anything I say to him'; 'never met anyone quite so dim'; 'although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick'- Thackeray; 'dumb officials make some really dumb decisions'; 'he was either normally stupid or being deliberately obtuse'; 'worked with the slow students' .
(adj.) having high relative density or specific gravity; 'dense as lead' .
(adj.) hard to pass through because of dense growth; 'dense vegetation'; 'thick woods' .
(adj.) permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter; 'dense smoke'; 'heavy fog'; 'impenetrable gloom' .
Checked by Douglas--From WordNet
Definition
(a.) Having the constituent parts massed or crowded together; close; compact; thick; containing much matter in a small space; heavy; opaque; as, a dense crowd; a dense forest; a dense fog.
(a.) Stupid; gross; crass; as, dense ignorance.
Editor: Meredith
Synonyms and Synonymous
a. Close, compact, condensed, compressed, thick.
Checker: Steve
Synonyms and Antonyms
SYN:Slow, thick, stupid, stolid, solid, stout, compact, consolidated, condensed,close, thickset
ANT:Quick, clever, intelligent, rare, rarefied, uncompacted, sparse
Editor: Susanna
Definition
adj. thick close compact: impenetrably stupid.—n. a thicket.—adv. Dense′ly.—ns. Dense′ness; Dens′ity the quality of being dense: the proportion of mass to bulk or volume: the quantity of matter per unit of bulk.
Editor: Omar
Examples
- At his feet an opening looked out upon a green sward, and at a little distance beyond was the dense wall of jungle and forest. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes.
- Diving into the dense obscurity in a line headed by Sam the turf-cutter, they pursued their trackless way home. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native.
- They had to wait, the driver calling and shouting, till the dense crowd would make way. D. H. Lawrence. Women in Love .
- For the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- He came to a little white house--you could see it was white even through this dense darkness--and knocked at the door. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
- Heat, in general, causes substances to expand or become less dense. Bertha M. Clark. General Science.
- There was none: all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening anywhere. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- Flint glass contains lead; the lead makes the glass dense, and gives it great refractive power, enabling it to bend and separate light in all directions. Bertha M. Clark. General Science.
- I feared no carriage would comethe white tempest raged so dense and wild. Charlotte Bronte. Villette.
- A fog narrowed our horizon to about a quarter of a mile, and the misty veil, cold and dense, enveloped sky and sea in equal obscurity. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- The actual world at their feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser blue. Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth.
- The atmosphere was much denser then, usually great cloud masses obscured the sun, frequent storms darkened the heavens. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- The elements of a denser kind would, accord ing to the law of gravitation, attract matter of less specific gravity. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
- She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than ever. Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence.
- The African forests were denser then, and spread eastward and northward from the Upper Nile. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
Editor: Meredith