tenuous

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“
His life at home is equally tenuous, as his volatile, violent father is a constant source of pain to both Anthony and his mother.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Long and thin; slender: tenuous strands.
  2. adjective Having a thin consistency; dilute.
  3. adjective Having little substance; flimsy: a tenuous argument.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

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Examples (46)

  • There is in them something vague, tenuous, and penetrating which escapes an exact estimation. —  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life Of St. Francis of Assisi, by Paul Sabatier.
  • But they also know that our hold on you is tenuous, and that you could just as easily refuse to attack a given target. —  Dozois, Gardner ; Strahan, Jonathan - SSC - The New Space Opera (v1.0)
  • The fact that his body had been in a near-perpetual state of arousal throughout the evening convinced him his present control bordered on tenuous, at best. —  Stephanie Bond - Irresistible
  • Trust between the groups was still tenuous, and neither group cared to be in a position where they must rely on the other. —  Rachel Lee - Shadows of Destiny
  • For more than any one, Knight realized how flimsy, how tenuous was his amorphous, imponderable "empire," not yet grounded in the elements of self-government TWO towers reared weirdly against a skyline of ocean and darkening sky, as the sun set. —  Amazing Stories November, 1942
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

precarious ·  fragile ·  ephemeral ·  insubstantial ·  intangible ·  tentative ·  fleeting ·  ethereal ·  shaky ·  unstable ·  insecure ·  risky
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin tenuis; see ten- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly also tenuious, q. v.; = French ténu = Spanish tenue, tenuo = Portuguese Italian tenue, from Latin tenuis, thin, slender, slim, fine, narrow, close, = English thin: see thin.
 

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/ˈtɛnjuəs/
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