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Glite Dictionary
🎓 High-level 🏔️ Thin air
rarified

rarified

1 9.0
Thin air high above the ground that is hard to breathe
  • adjective
  • /ˈrɛrəˌfaɪd/
translation icon : rarefactado
  • As the airplane ascended, the rarified atmosphere made it difficult for passengers to feel awake.
  • rarified air
  • rarified atmosphere

But when you make those super massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, you can make them out of rarified gas clouds that just contract.

Examples

  • When these prescribed practices move from the rarified conditions under which randomized controlled trials are conducted into agency settings, they confront real-world organizational realities.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The children of these rich are raised in rarified air.

    Blog text (15)

  • But when you make those super massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, you can make them out of rarified gas clouds that just contract.

    Shawn Ryan Show

  • The wind was up to eighty-five knots: hurricane speed on Earth, yet only a zephyr in the rarified atmosphere of Mars.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The interest is so overwhelmingly in yourself, not in the lecturer, that it has been like breathing rarified air—exciting to me.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Since theology is not simply a game of ideas in the rarified atmosphere of the academy, we find it tangibly unfolding in other arenas as well, including congregational life.

    Academic text (2009)

  • Yet in practical terms, the Higgs is an incomprehensible abstraction, a partial solution to an extraordinarily rarified and perhaps always-incomplete intellectual puzzle.

    Blog text (8)

  • Ankh: "As for CO2 itself, the old measurements made at sea-level pressure had little to say about the frigid and rarified air in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where most of the infrared absorption takes place."

    Blog text (15)

  • When we move from the rarified air of CASTL and its scholars, a somewhat more discouraging picture emerges about the actual penetration of SOTL into the deep structures of academe.

    Academic text (2005)

  • The climbers struggled to breathe in the rarified air at the summit of the mountain.

Synonyms

rare
vsrarified
  • Specialized
18 6.9

Air or gas that is thin and hard to breathe at high places

is limited to gases at high altitude rather than any thin substance
rarefied
vsrarified
2 8.5

Thin air high above the ground

is specifically about low density at high altitudes

Antonyms

thick
585 1.0

Having a large distance between two sides and often very dense

dense
  • Specialized
42 4.2

Has a lot of matter in a small space

How Dense

dense
  • Specialized
42 4.2
rarified
1 9.0
thin
420 1.0

Surface Forms

rarified positive
rarer comparative
rarefier comparative
rarefied positive

Morphology

rarified = rarefy (transparent) = rare + fy + ed

Formed by adding -ed to the verb 'rarefy' (itself from 'rare' + '-fy'); for the physical sense the meaning 'made thin/less dense' is directly derivable from the base.

Etymology

Rarified comes from the Latin word rarus meaning 'thin' or 'sparse', and it shares the same root as the common word rare. So rarified air is air that has been 'thinned' and has 'low density', which is why it is hard to breathe high on mountains.