# dense
## English
### Etymology

From Middle French dense, from Latin dēnsus, from Proto-Indo-European *dens- (“thick, dense”).

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA: /dɛns/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɛns

### Adjective

dense (comparative denser, superlative densest)
* Having relatively high density.
    Synonym: solid
* Compact; crowded together.
    Synonyms: compact, crowded, packed; see also Thesaurus:compact
    Antonyms: diffuse; see also Thesaurus:diffuse
** 1998, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia: Knowledge in Depth‎, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 172, 173:The regions of densest population are the tributaries and banks of the Huai above Pang-pu and the diked areas along the right bank of the Yangtze. […] There are four large towns—Ho-fei, the capital; Huai-nan; Pang-pu; and Wu-hu.
* Thick; difficult to penetrate.
    Synonyms: thick, solid
    Antonym: thin
** 1881, Ernest William White, Cameos from the Silver-land: Or, The Experiences of a Young Naturalist in the Argentine Republic, London: J. Van Voorst, page 44:... mantling the slopes are other still denser forests, where the Pacara (Enterolobium timbavica), Lapacho (Tecoma stans), Quina-Quina (Myroxilon peruanum), urunday (allied to the Lapacho) Quefioa (Rosacea Polylepis racemosa), Cascaron ...
** 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.
* Opaque; allowing little light to pass through.
    Synonyms: cloudy, opaque; see also Thesaurus:opaque
    Antonyms: clear, diaphanous, see-through, translucent, transparent; see also Thesaurus:transparent, Thesaurus:translucent
* Obscure, or difficult to understand.
    Synonyms: abstruse, difficult, hard, incomprehensible, obscure, tough; see also Thesaurus:incomprehensible
    Antonyms: clear, comprehensible, easy, simple, straightforward, understandable; see also Thesaurus:comprehensible
* (mathematics, topology) Being a subset of a topological space that approximates the space well. See the Wikipedia article on dense sets for a mathematical definition.
    Antonym: meager
* Slow to comprehend; of low intelligence. (of a person)
    Synonyms: dumb, slow, stupid, thick; see also Thesaurus:stupid
    Antonyms: bright, canny, intelligent, quick, quick-witted, smart; see also Thesaurus:intelligent
** 2023 May 16, Cade Metz, “Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:There are times when systems like GPT-4 seem to mimic human reasoning, but there are also times when they seem terribly dense. “These behaviors are not always consistent,” Ece Kamar, a Microsoft researcher, said.

#### Antonyms

* (antonym(s) of “crowded together”): diffuse, few and far between (of things as opposed to one thing), scattered, sparse, rarefied (scientific, to describe gases)

#### Derived terms

* dense array
* dense blazingstar
* dense-in-itself
* densen
* denseness
* densification
* densify
* densimeter
* electrodense
* equidense
* hyperdense
* hypodense
* isodense
* nondense
* overdense
* radiodense
* superdense
* ultradense
* underdense

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Noun

dense (plural denses)
* A thicket.

### Anagrams

* Denes, Edens, Sneed, denes, edens, needs, sende, sneed

## Esperanto
### Etymology

From densa +‎ -e.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: [ˈdense]
* Rhymes: -ense
* Hyphenation: den‧se

### Adverb

dense
* densely

## French
### Etymology

Borrowed from Latin dēnsus.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /dɑ̃s/
* Audio:(file)

### Adjective

dense (plural denses)
* dense

#### Related terms

* condenser
* densité

### Further reading

* “dense”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

## Italian
### Adjective

dense f pl
* feminine plural of denso

## Latin
### Etymology

From dēnsus (“dense, close, frequent”) +‎ -ē (adverbial suffix).

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /ˈden.seː/, [ˈd̪ẽːs̠eː]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /ˈden.se/, [ˈd̪ɛnse]

### Adverb

dēnsē (comparative dēnsius, superlative dēnsissimē)
* closely, in rapid succession

#### Related terms

* dēnseō
* dēnsō
* dēnsus

#### References

* “dense”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
* “dense”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
* dense in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

## Spanish
### Verb

dense
* third-person plural imperative of dar combined with se