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🌳 Thick growth ⚖️ Heavy for size 🌫️ Hard to see through 🤔 Slow to understand 👥 Packed together
dense

dense

28 3.9
Thick so that little light can pass through
  • adjective
  • /dɛns/
translation icon : denso
  • In many areas, dense fog severely hampers vital operations.
  • dense clouds
  • dense smoke

But storms, ice and dense fog battered her small plane.

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Examples

  • The air was heavy with the scent of new leaves, too dense to breathe with ease.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Some days, it is like walking through a dense fog for me.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Air is much less dense than water.

  • But storms, ice and dense fog battered her small plane.

    Veritasium

  • Oceanographers know a great deal about the paths by which the cold, dense water enters the deep ocean.

    Academic text (1994)

  • An intricate pattern so dense it looks like a solid, impenetrable wall of light.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • The eclipse will provide an excellent opportunity to photograph the moon against a dense stellar background.

    Academic text (1993)

  • They've got a pink tone to them and they've got a very dense, thick structure.

  • The beard appeared to be dense and black, and it was meticulously trimmed and shaped.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • The dense fog made it hard for the drivers to see the road ahead.

Synonyms

thick
vsdense
585 1.0

Having a large distance between two sides and often very dense

focuses specifically on blocking light due to concentration or thickness
impenetrable
vsdense
3 7.0

So thick that you cannot see through it

allows little or no light rather than fully blocking it
thicky
vsdense
6.8

A thick, not runny texture in food like soup or sauce

speaks about opacity and difficulty seeing through rather than viscosity

Antonyms

transparent
54 3.2

Clear enough to see things behind it, like glass

Compounds

dense forest
4 2.8

A forest with trees close together that makes it hard to move or see

dense thicket
1 5.7

An area of thick bushes that is hard to walk through

dense blazing star
  • US
9.1

A tall plant with many close purple flower spikes used in flower arrangements

dense-leaved elodea
8.8

A water plant with deep green, dense leaves used to add oxygen to aquariums

How Transparent

transparent
54 3.2
translucent
30 4.8
cloudy
9 2.3
dense
28 3.9
opaque
1 4.7

Surface Forms

dense positive
denser comparative
densest superlative

Etymology

Dense comes from the old Latin word densus, which means 'thick' or 'crowded', and it is the same root you see in condense and density. So when fog or smoke is dense, it is like a thick mass that blocks light.