tenuous
pronunciation
How to pronounce tenuous in British English:
UK [ˈtenjuəs]
How to pronounce tenuous in American English:
US [ˈtenjuəs]
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- Adjective:
- having little substance or significance
- having thin consistency
- very thin in gauge or diameter
Word Origin
- tenuous
- tenuous: [16] Tenuous comes from the same ultimate ancestor as thin. It is an alteration of an earlier and now defunct tenuious, which was adapted from Latin tenuis ‘thin’. And this went back to the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’, a variant of which produced English thin.=> tend, thin
- tenuous (adj.)
- 1590s, "thin, unsubstantial," irregularly formed from Latin tenuis "thin, drawn out, meager, slim, slender," figuratively "trifling, insignificant, poor, low in rank," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch" (cognates: Sanskrit tanuh "thin," literally "stretched out;" see tenet) + -ous. The correct form with respect to the Latin is tenuious. The figurative sense of "having slight importance, not substantial" is found from 1817 in English. Related: Tenuously; tenuousness.
Example
- 1. The encryption used by secure websites relies on tenuous relationships .
- 2. " The linkage to performance is sometimes tenuous , " dunn said .
- 3. But if layering in van eyck creates hyperreal colors , fish 's colors are more tenuous , ethereal , changeable .
- 4. As the supernova blast wave slams into tenuous clouds of interstellar gas , the resulting collision heats and compresses the gas , causing it to glow .
- 5. The logic is tenuous : it is , after all , amazon which is firing these local entrepreneurs ( some 10000 in california alone this month ) as a way to avoid collecting tax .