Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English homepage

Topic: LITERATURE

Date: 1400-1500
Language: Latin
Origin: densus

dense

 adjective
     
dense
1 made of or containing a lot of things or people that are very close together [= thick]
dense undergrowth/forest/woodland/jungle etc
A narrow track wound steeply up through dense forest.
a dense rurally-based population
2DN difficult to see through or breathe in
dense fog/smoke/cloud
dense black smoke
3 informal not able to understand things easily [= stupid]:
Am I being dense? I don't quite understand.
4AL a dense piece of writing is difficult to understand because it contains a lot of information or uses complicated language
5HP technical a substance that is dense has a lot of mass in relation to its size:
Water is eight hundred times denser than air.
—densely adverb:
—denseness noun [uncountable]
Definition of dense from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English within
the topic LITERATURE
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