mindmap
root((TEN/TENU))
tenuous
Having little substance or strength; flimsy, weak.
🌱It's a rather tenuous theory, and the evidence supporting it has been questioned by several researchers. 🌳Something tenuous has been stretched thin and might break at any time. A person with a tenuous hold on his sanity should be watched carefully. If a business is only tenuously surviving, it will probably go bankrupt in the next recession. If there seems to be only a tenuous connection between two crimes, it means the investigators have more work to do. attenuated Thinned or weakened.
🌱The smallpox shot is an injection of the virus in an attenuated form too weak to produce an actual case of smallpox. 🌳A friendship can become attenuated if neither person bothers to keep in touch. Radio waves can become attenuated by the shape of the landscape, by foliage, by atmospheric conditions, and simply by distance. Factory workers and rock musicians often use noise-attenuating ear plugs to save their hearing. To attenuate something isn't to stop it, just to tone it down. extenuating Partially excusing or justifying.
🌱A good college rarely accepts someone who has dropped out of high school twice, but in his case there were extenuating circumstances, including the death of both parents. 🌳Extenuating is almost always used today before "circumstances." Extenuating circumstances are an important concept in the law. If you steal to feed your children, you're naturally less guilty than someone who steals just to get richer; if you kill someone in self-defense, that's obviously an extenuating circumstance that makes your act different from murder. Juries will usually consider extenuating circumstances （even when they're instructed not to）, and most judges will listen carefully to an argument about extenuating circumstances as well. And they work outside of the courtroom as well; if you miss your daughter's performance in the middle-school pageant, she may forgive you if it was because you had to race Tigger to the vet's emergency room. distended Stretched or bulging out in all directions; swelled.
🌱All the children's bellies were distended, undoubtedly because of inadequate nutrition or parasites. 🌳Before giving you a shot, the nurse may wrap a rubber tube around your upper arm to distend the veins. When the heart isn't pumping properly, the skin of the feet and ankles may become distended. A doctor who notices that an internal organ has become distended will always want to find out the cause. As you can see, distended tends to be a medical term.
🌱It's a rather tenuous theory, and the evidence supporting it has been questioned by several researchers. 🌳Something tenuous has been stretched thin and might break at any time. A person with a tenuous hold on his sanity should be watched carefully. If a business is only tenuously surviving, it will probably go bankrupt in the next recession. If there seems to be only a tenuous connection between two crimes, it means the investigators have more work to do. attenuated Thinned or weakened.
🌱The smallpox shot is an injection of the virus in an attenuated form too weak to produce an actual case of smallpox. 🌳A friendship can become attenuated if neither person bothers to keep in touch. Radio waves can become attenuated by the shape of the landscape, by foliage, by atmospheric conditions, and simply by distance. Factory workers and rock musicians often use noise-attenuating ear plugs to save their hearing. To attenuate something isn't to stop it, just to tone it down. extenuating Partially excusing or justifying.
🌱A good college rarely accepts someone who has dropped out of high school twice, but in his case there were extenuating circumstances, including the death of both parents. 🌳Extenuating is almost always used today before "circumstances." Extenuating circumstances are an important concept in the law. If you steal to feed your children, you're naturally less guilty than someone who steals just to get richer; if you kill someone in self-defense, that's obviously an extenuating circumstance that makes your act different from murder. Juries will usually consider extenuating circumstances （even when they're instructed not to）, and most judges will listen carefully to an argument about extenuating circumstances as well. And they work outside of the courtroom as well; if you miss your daughter's performance in the middle-school pageant, she may forgive you if it was because you had to race Tigger to the vet's emergency room. distended Stretched or bulging out in all directions; swelled.
🌱All the children's bellies were distended, undoubtedly because of inadequate nutrition or parasites. 🌳Before giving you a shot, the nurse may wrap a rubber tube around your upper arm to distend the veins. When the heart isn't pumping properly, the skin of the feet and ankles may become distended. A doctor who notices that an internal organ has become distended will always want to find out the cause. As you can see, distended tends to be a medical term.
TEN/TENU comes from the Latin tenuis, meaning "thin." So to extend something is to stretch it, and lots of things get thin when they're stretched. The ten- root is even seen in pretend, which once meant to stretch something out above or in front; that something came to be a claim that you were something that you actually weren't.🌸