dense /dens/ BrE AmE adjective
[ Date: 1400-1500 ; Language: Latin ; Origin: densus ]
1 . made of or containing a lot of things or people that are very close together SYN thick
dense undergrowth/forest/woodland/jungle etc
A narrow track wound steeply up through dense forest.
a dense rurally-based population
2 . difficult to see through or breathe in
dense fog/smoke/cloud
dense black smoke
3 . informal not able to understand things easily SYN stupid :
Am I being dense? I don’t quite understand.
4 . a dense piece of writing is difficult to understand because it contains a lot of information or uses complicated language
5 . 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 :
a densely populated area
—denseness noun [uncountable]
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COLLOCATIONS
■ nouns
▪ dense forest/wood/woodland/jungle
Their helicopter could not land because of the dense jungle.
▪ dense undergrowth (=plants, bushes etc growing around and under trees)
The bird is found mainly in woodland where there is dense undergrowth.
▪ dense vegetation (=plants in general)
The land around here is covered with dense vegetation.
▪ dense foliage (=leaves of a plant or tree)
a thick bushy plant with dense foliage
▪ a dense covering of something
steep-sided mountains with a dense covering of trees
▪ a dense mass
a dense mass of equatorial rainforest
▪ a dense network of something
The country is served by a dense network of roads.
▪ a dense population (=a lot of people living close together)
Britain has a particular problem because of dense population.