dense
nounEtymology From Middle French dense, from Latin dēnsus, from Proto-Indo-European *dens- (“thick, dense”) (whence also Ancient Greek δασύς (dasús)).
1
A thicket.
dense
adj/ˈdɛns/ · [ˈdɛns]
Etymology From Middle French dense, from Latin dēnsus, from Proto-Indo-European *dens- (“thick, dense”) (whence also Ancient Greek δασύς (dasús)).
7 senses
1
Having relatively high density.
2
Compact; crowded together.
- The regions of densest population are the tributaries and banks of the Huai above Pang-pu and the diked areas along the right bank of the Yangtze.[…] There are four large towns—Ho-fei, the capital; Huai-nan; Pang-pu; and Wu-hu.1998, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia: Knowledge in Depth, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 172, 173:
3
Thick; difficult to penetrate.
- ... mantling the slopes are other still denser forests, where the Pacara (Enterolobium timbavica), Lapacho (Tecoma stans), Quina-Quina (Myroxilon peruanum), urunday (allied to the Lapacho) Quefioa (Rosacea Polylepis racemosa), Cascaron ...1881, Ernest William White, Cameos from the Silver-land: Or, The Experiences of a Young Naturalist in the Argentine Republic, London: J. Van Voorst, page 44:
- And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
4
Opaque; allowing little light to pass through.
5
Obscure or difficult to understand.
- And if you're experiencing a weird sensation after that clip that you can't quite place, it's because it was nice! It was happy kids talking about how they're able to be themselves, and you don't usually get nice things on this show, which at this point is honestly mainly dense statistics and facts and occasional Pikachu porn!2025 April 6, 31:34 from the start, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 12, episode 7, spoken by John Oliver, published 7 April 2025, retrieved 14 Apr 2025:
6
Mathematics, Sciences, Topology Such that its closure in T is T.
Of a subset S of a topological space T
7
Slow to comprehend; of low intelligence. (of a person)
- There are times when systems like GPT-4 seem to mimic human reasoning, but there are also times when they seem terribly dense. “These behaviors are not always consistent,” Ece Kamar, a Microsoft researcher, said.2023 May 16, Cade Metz, “Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- Antonyms
- diffuse, few and far between, scattered, sparse, rarefied
- Derived terms
- dense array, dense blazingstar, dense-in-itself, densen, denseness, densification, densify, densimeter, electrodense, equidense, hyperdense, hypodense, isodense, nondense, overdense, radiodense, superdense, ultradense, underdense