Definitions

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

  • noun rare See rarefaction.

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

  • noun Alternative form of rarefaction.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • In an age in which fiction tends toward an ever and ever greater rarification, and movies toward an ever more repellent brutalization, these series have saved something, if only by tuning a true ear to certain levels of American idiom.

    film flam Larry McMurtry 1987

  • In an age in which fiction tends toward an ever and ever greater rarification, and movies toward an ever more repellent brutalization, these series have saved something, if only by tuning a true ear to certain levels of American idiom.

    film flam Larry McMurtry 1987

  • In an age in which fiction tends toward an ever and ever greater rarification, and movies toward an ever more repellent brutalization, these series have saved something, if only by tuning a true ear to certain levels of American idiom.

    film flam Larry McMurtry 1987

  • He also found that the formation of one or other type of ray is determined by the degree of gas rarification in the discharge tube.

    Nobel Prize in Physics 1905 - Presentation Speech 1967

  • The air is exhausted to the desired degree of rarification.

    Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 Federal Investigations of Mine Accidents, Structural Materials and Fuels. Paper No. 1171 Herbert M. Wilson

  • The depressing heat of a dog-day and the rarification of the air give to the least sound made by human beings all its signification.

    The Village Rector Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Five centuries later, we've seen the distancing and rarification of "Art," on the one hand, into a realm accessible only to the supposed cognoscenti -- those capable of affording its offerings and understanding its criticism -- and, on the other, into underground forms born out of alienation and disaffection, which often subsequently become popular and vibrant, but whose adherents seem increasingly disassociated from their own historical / cultural roots.

    the cassandra pages 2008

Comments

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  • “I do not know,” he began, “if you have ever considered the nature of sound. Suffice to say that it consists of a series of waves moving through the air. Not, however, waves like those on the surface of the sea — oh dear no! Those waves are up and down movements. Sound waves consist of alternate compressions and rarefactions.”

    “Rare-what?”

    “Rarefactions.”

    “Don’t you mean rarefications?”

    “I do not. I doubt if such a word exists, and if it does, it shouldn’t,” retorted Purvis, with the aplomb of Sir Alan Herbert dropping a particularly revolting neologism into his killing-bottle. . . .

                                    — Arthur C. Clarke. “Silence, Please”.

    September 18, 2011