dense adj

1 permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter; "dense smoke"; "heavy fog"; "impenetrable gloom" [syn: heavy, impenetrable]

2 closely crowded together; "a compact shopping center"; "a dense population"; "thick crowds" [syn: compact, thick]

3 hard to pass through because of dense growth; "dense vegetation"; "thick woods" [syn: thick]

4 having high relative density or specific gravity; "dense as lead"

5 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: dim, dull, dumb, obtuse, slow]

English

Etymology

From densus.

Pronunciation

• /dɛns/

• Rhymes with: -ɛns

Adjective

1. Having relatively high density.
2. Compact; crowded together.
3. Thick; difficult to penetrate.
4. Opaque; allowing little light to pass through.
5. Obscure , or difficult to understand.
6. Of a person, slow to comprehend; of low intelligence.

Synonyms

• sense having relatively high density solid
• sense crowded together compact, crowded, packed
• sense difficult to penetrate thick, solid
• cloudy, opaque
• sense difficult to understand abstruse, difficult, hard, incomprehensible, obscure, tough
• sense slow to comprehend dumb, slow, stupid, thick

Antonyms

• sense having relatively high density
• sense crowded together diffuse, few and far between , scattered, sparse
• sense difficult to penetrate thin
• clear, diaphanous, see-through, translucent, transparent
• sense difficult to understand clear, comprehensible, easy, simple, straightforward, understandable
• sense slow to comprehend bright, canny, intelligent, quick, quick-witted, smart

Translations

• Danish: tæt
• Finnish: tiheä, tiivis
• Hebrew: צפוף (tzafuf) (1)
• Ido: densa
• Italian: denso all meanings
• Slovene: gost , gosta , gosto
• Spanish: denso

French

Etymology

From densus.

Pronunciation

Adjective

1. dense

Related terms

• densité

Italian

Adjective

Latin

Etymology

From densus.

Adverb

1. closely, in rapid succession

Related terms

• denseō
• densō
• densus

References

• Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, 1st edition. (Oxford University Press)

Density and dense usually refer to a measure of how much of some entity is within a fixed amount of other space. Types of density include:

In physics:

• Density, mass per volume
  • Area density, mass over a (two-dimensional) area
  • Linear density, mass over a (one-dimensional) line
  • Planck density, Planck mass per Planck length
  • Specific gravity, a dimensionless ratio based on the density of a substance to the density of water
• Relative density, a measure of density in comparison to the density of something else
  • Vapour density, a relative density used for gases
• Current density, the ratio of electric current to area
  • Charge density, the electric charge per volume
• Energy density, potential energy per unit volume or mass, depending on context
• Force density, force per unit volume
• Information density, the amount of information compared to many units
• Optical density, the absorbance of an element

In mathematics:

• Dense set and nowhere dense set in topology
• Schnirelmann density in number theory
• Natural density (also called asymptotic density) in number theory
• Lebesgue density in measure theory
• Probability density function, a function which maps probabilities across the real line and whose integral is 1
  • Density estimation is the construction of an estimate of a probability density function
  • Kernel density estimation, used in statistics to estimate a probability density function of a random variable
• Tensor density in differential geometry
• Density in graph theory, the fraction of possible edges that exist in a graph
• Dense order in order theory
• Dense-in-itself, in geometry, is a set that contains no isolated points
• In forcing (mathematics), a subset D of a forcing notion (P, ≤ ) is called dense in P if for any p in P there is d in D with d≤p

In other scientific fields:

• Population density, population per unit area
• Computer storage density, bits (how computers store information) over an amount of area or volume

Density can also refer to:

• Spiritual density, states of being for various planes of existence

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