Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. The quality or condition of being tenuous; lack of thickness, density, or substance.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The state of being tenuous or thin; want of substantial thickness or depth; fineness; thinness, as applied to a broad substance, or slenderness, as applied to one that is long.
  2. n. Rarity; rareness; thinness, as of a fluid.
  3. n. Poverty; indigence.
  4. n. Simplicity or plainness; a quality of style opposed to opulence or grandeur.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Thinness, slenderness.
  2. n. Meagreness, paucity.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The quality or state of being tenuous; thinness, applied to a broad substance; slenderness, applied to anything that is long
  2. n. Rarily; rareness; thinness, as of a fluid.
  3. n. Poverty; indigence.
  4. n. Refinement; delicacy.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a rarified quality
  2. n. relatively small dimension through an object as opposed to its length or width
  3. n. the quality of lacking intensity or substance

Etymologies

  1. Middle English tenuite, from Old French, from Latin tenuitās, thinness, from tenuis, thin; see tenuous.

Examples

  • “Cope commented on this fragility, writing ‘in the extreme tenuity of all its parts, this vertebra exceeds this type of those already described, so that much care was requisite to secure its preservation’ (p. 563), and his drawing also suggests that the vertebra had been subjected to extensive weathering and hence was already fragile.”

    Biggest sauropod ever (part…. II)

  • “The pottingar delivered his opinion in a most insinuating manner; but he seemed to shrink into something less than his natural tenuity when he saw the blood rise in the old cheek of Simon Glover, and inflame to the temples the complexion of the redoubted smith.”

    The Fair Maid of Perth

  • “This graceful development of belief, emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire's time, any more than it was that of the Holy Office.”

    Voltaire

  • “And at this day travelers ascending to the top of the Peak of Tenerife make the ascent by night and not by day, and soon after the rising of the sun are warned and urged by their guides to come down without delay, on account of the danger they run lest the animal spirits should swoon and be suffocated by the tenuity of the air.”

    The New Organon

  • “As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a certain tenuity in its blackness that this spot possessed four legs; and moment by moment it became more unmistakable that it was composed of the persons of two young men.”

    A Haunted House, and other short stories

  • “He was a small man, not ill-made by Nature, but reduced to unnatural tenuity by dissipation-a corporeal attribute of which he was apt to boast, as it enabled him, as he said, to put himself up at 7st 7lb without any ‘d — — nonsense of not eating and drinking’.”

    Doctor Thorne

  • “Now the nature of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult for an impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which it is impossible to keep an impression it may have received.”

    Essays and Miscellanies

  • “Membrane envelops each one of the bones and each one of the viscera, both in the larger and the smaller animals; though in the smaller animals the membranes are indiscernible from their extreme tenuity and minuteness.”

    The History of Animals

  • “But after taking his prey he stretches himself until he stands straight out to the very tip, and then he contracts and squeezes himself into little compass, so that the swallowed mass may pass down his outstretched body; and this action on his part is due to the tenuity and length of his gullet.”

    The History of Animals

  • “Although it was relatively simple to compare the tenuity of the powder obtained from local kitchen sieves and the powder obtained from our Forplex grinder, it was not the same thing for the other forms of galena.”

    Chapter 12

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Lists

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Comments

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  • yarb Contains its own scrabble score (ten). Jun 24, 2011
  • yarb That impermanence, indeed, the ramshackle tenuity of the life, were part of its beauty.

    - Malcolm Lowry, October Ferry to Gabriola Jul 30, 2008

‘tenuity’ has been looked up 552 times, added to 5 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.