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Glite Dictionary
🌬️ To make less dense 🎨 To make refined
to rarify

to rarify

1 9.1
To make air or gas thinner so there is less of it in a place
  • verb
  • /ˈrɛrəˌfaɪ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : rarefiar
  • Stunned, I sat staring through the windshield at nothing, as the great truck engine mindlessly idled, pumping blue exhaust into the rarified Denver air.

Examples

  • The artist aimed to rarify her work by selecting delicate colors and intricate patterns.

  • That is rarified air.

    The Big Year (2011)

  • A massive body rarifies the medium around it so that your inertia is unbalanced, causing you to move toward the body?

    Blog text (22)

  • The factory's new process effectively rarifies the metals, producing lighter and stronger components.

  • As the mountain climbers ascended, they found that the air began to rarify, making it harder to breathe.

Synonyms

to refine
vsto rarify
  • Specialized
41 3.9

Remove unwanted parts from a material to make it pure

emphasizes reducing density or thinning rather than only removing impurities
to rarefy
vsto rarify
  • Specialized
9.9

To make air or other things thinner so they have more empty space

focuses on increasing purity or refinement rather than only thinning
to aerify
vsto rarify
  • Specialized
9.9

To turn a liquid or solid into gas when heat makes it rise into the air

means make something less dense or more refined without becoming gas

Antonyms

to thicken
35 2.3

Become or make something less runny

to densify
  • Specialized
1 6.9

To make something more full of buildings, people or material

How Dense

to compress
94 3.7
to rarify
  • Specialized
1 9.1
dilute
1 4.2
to thin out
  • Informal
5 3.5

Surface Forms

rarify infinitive
rarified past
rarified past participle
rarifying present participle
rarifies third person singular

Morphology

rarify = rare (transparent) = rare + ify

This meaning 'make or become less dense' directly follows from 'rare' (thinly distributed) + the productive suffix '-ify'.

Etymology

Rarify comes from the Latin root rarus meaning 'sparse' or 'thin' and the ending -fy meaning 'make', just like the English word rare. So when air or gas rarifies at high altitude it becomes 'thinner' and less dense, which is why breathing becomes more difficult.