Adjacent Words

Dense definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DENSE, a.
1. Close; compact; having its constituent parts closely united; applied to solids or fluids; as a dense body; dense air.
2. Thick; as a dense cloud, or fog.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter; "dense smoke"; "heavy fog"; "impenetrable gloom" [syn: dense, heavy, impenetrable]
2: hard to pass through because of dense growth; "dense vegetation"; "thick woods" [syn: dense, thick]
3: having high relative density or specific gravity; "dense as lead"
4: 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" [syn: dense, dim, dull, dumb, obtuse, slow]

Merriam Webster's

adjective (denser; densest) Etymology: Latin densus; akin to Greek dasys thick with hair or leaves Date: 15th century 1. a. marked by compactness or crowding together of parts <dense vegetation> <dense traffic> b. having a high mass per unit volume <carbon dioxide is a dense gas> 2. a. slow to understand ; stupid, thickheaded <was too dense to get the joke> b. extreme <dense ignorance> 3. having between any two elements at least one element <the set of rational numbers is dense> 4. demanding concentration to follow or comprehend <dense prose> 5. having high or relatively high opacity <a dense fog> <a dense photographic negative> Synonyms: see stupid • densely adverb • denseness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 closely compacted in substance; thick (dense fog). 2 crowded together (the population is less dense on the outskirts). 3 colloq. stupid. Derivatives: densely adv. denseness n. Etymology: F dense or L densus

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dense Dense, a. [L. densus; akin to Gr. ? thick with hair or leaves: cf. F. dense.] 1. 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. All sorts of bodies, firm and fluid, dense and rare. --Ray. To replace the cloudy barrier dense. --Cowper. 2. Stupid; gross; crass; as, dense ignorance.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(denser, densest) 1. Something that is dense contains a lot of things or people in a small area. Where Bucharest now stands, there once was a large, dense forest... They thrust their way through the dense crowd. ? sparse ADJ • densely Java is a densely populated island... ? sparsely ADV: usu ADV -ed 2. Dense fog or smoke is difficult to see through because it is very heavy and dark. A dense column of smoke rose several miles into the air. = thick ADJ 3. In science, a dense substance is very heavy in relation to its volume. (TECHNICAL) ...a small dense star. ADJ 4. If you say that someone is dense, you mean that you think they are stupid and that they take a long time to understand simple things. (INFORMAL) He's not a bad man, just a bit dense. = thick ADJ: v-link ADJ

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Close, compact, condensed, compressed, thick.

Moby Thesaurus

Boeotian, adamantine, asinine, beef-brained, beef-witted, blockheaded, blockish, bony, bovine, bristling, broad-bodied, bulky, bullnecked, cement, cemental, chumpish, cloddish, close, close-knit, close-textured, close-woven, coarse, compact, compacted, compressed, concentrated, concrete, condensed, congested, consolidated, corneous, corpulent, cowish, crammed, crammed full, crass, crawling, crowded, diamondlike, dim, dim-witted, doltish, dull, dullard, dumb, duncical, duncish, durable, dure, enduring, exuberant, fat, fatheaded, firm, flintlike, flinty, flourishing, foolish, full, full-bodied, gluey, granitelike, granitic, gross, hard, hard as nails, hardhearted, heaped, heavy, heavyset, horny, impassable, impassive, impenetrable, impermeable, ineducable, iron-hard, ironlike, jam-packed, jammed, jungled, jungly, klutzy, lapideous, lasting, lethargic, lithoid, lithoidal, lumpish, lush, luxuriant, marble, marblelike, massed, massive, nonporous, numskulled, oafish, obdurate, obtuse, opaque, osseous, overgrown, overrun, packed, phlegmatic, piled, populous, rank, resistant, resistive, riotous, rocklike, rocky, rugged, serried, slow, slow-witted, sluggish, solid, sottish, sound, stable, steady, steellike, steely, stolid, stonelike, stony, stout, strong, stupid, sturdy, substantial, swarming, teeming, thick, thick-bodied, thick-growing, thick-witted, thickheaded, thickset, three-dimensional, tight, torpid, tough, unteachable, unweeded, unyielding, viscid, viscose, viscous, weed-choked, weed-ridden, weedy, well-built, well-constructed, well-founded, well-grounded, well-made, wrongheaded