Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In electricity: The decrease of telephonic currents with increasing distance, due to the absorption of current by the electrostatic capacity of the telephone line.
  • noun More generally, the decrease of electrical effects with increasing distance.
  • noun The act or process of making slender, thin, or lean; the state of being thin; emaciation; reduced thickness or proportions.
  • noun The act of making fine by comminution or attrition.
  • noun The act or process of lessening in complexity or intensity; reduction of force, strength, or energy; specifically, in homeopathy, the reduction of the active principle of medicines to minute or infinitesimal doses.
  • noun The act of making thin or thinner, as a fluid, or the state of being thin or thinned; diminution of density or viscidity: as, the attenuation of the humors; specifically, in brewing and distilling, the thinning or clarifying of saccharine worts by the conversion of the sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act or process of making slender, or the state of being slender; emaciation.
  • noun The act of attenuating; the act of making thin or less dense, or of rarefying, as fluids or gases.
  • noun The process of weakening in intensity; diminution of virulence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A gradual diminishing in the strength of something.
  • noun physics A reduction in the level of some property with distance, especially the amplitude of a wave or the strength of a signal.
  • noun biology A weakening in the virulence of a pathogen or other microorganism.
  • noun botany The tapering of a leaf etc to a fine point.
  • noun engineering A fabrication process in which a material is stretched out into a thin shape.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the property of something that has been weakened or reduced in thickness or density
  • noun weakening in force or intensity

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin attenuātiō ("a diminishing")

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