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attenuate

Adjective
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Attenuate means to make something thinner, weaker, less intense, or less effective; it can describe reduced sound, light, force, or emotional impact.

Detailed Definition
The fountain sheds “attenuate crystal,” suggesting a delicate, thin stream or a weakened gleam of water. The word is more specialized and literary than the common alternatives “thin” or “weakened.”
Example
Example in poetry:
“Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds” uses attenuate to mean thinned, slender, or made delicate; Shelley’s airy natural imagery often turns water and light into fine, almost immaterial forms; Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “dwindled” natural details similarly suggest diminished force; a contemporary drought poem might describe an attenuate stream reduced to a thread of water
Additional Notes
“Attenuate” may require lookup because its literary adjectival use means thin or weakened in “attenuate crystal.”; Found in the poem, A Spellbound Palace by Thomas Hardy
Also Known As
weaken diminish reduce
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