dense

American  

[dens] / dɛns /

adjective

denser, densest

1. having the component parts closely compacted together; crowded or compact.

   a dense forest;

   dense population.

   Synonyms:

   impenetrable, teeming

2. stupid; slow-witted; dull.

3. intense; extreme.

   dense ignorance.

4. relatively opaque; transmitting little light, as a photographic negative, optical glass, or color.

5. difficult to understand or follow because of being closely packed with ideas or complexities of style.

   a dense philosophical essay.

6. Mathematics. of or relating to a subset of a topological space in which every neighborhood of every point in the space contains at least one point of the subset.

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dense British  

/ dɛns /

adjective

1. thickly crowded or closely set

   a dense crowd

2. thick; impenetrable

   a dense fog

3. physics having a high density

4. stupid; dull; obtuse

5. (of a photographic negative) having many dark or exposed areas

6. (of an optical glass, colour, etc) transmitting little or no light

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Other Word Forms

• densely adverb
• denseness noun
• nondenseness noun
• superdense adjective
• ultradense adjective

Etymology

Origin of dense

First recorded in 1590–1600; from Latin dēnsus “thick”; cognate with Greek dasýs

Example Sentences

Giant anteaters have black and white diagonal stripes, dense shaggy hair and super-sized snouts.

From BBC

The first two tracks are dense and heavy, but elsewhere on the record she opts for a breezier approach.

From The Wall Street Journal

I left the concrete path and shimmied through an opening in the dense bushes that led to deeper green—tall elm, fir, and birch standing together.

From Literature

She was not entirely translucent now, her black-and-white body nearly dense enough to obscure the world behind her.

From Literature

Since large galaxies typically form in dense clusters, this raised questions.

From Science Daily

Related Words

• heavy
• impenetrable
• opaque
• solid