{"id":2323,"date":"2011-08-05T21:51:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T02:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/?p=2323"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:20","slug":"vocab-in-the-classics-attenuate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/vocab-in-the-classics-attenuate\/","title":{"rendered":"Vocab in the Classics: Attenuate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4786\" title=\"519T4SHJ6QL\" src=\"\/\/www.jenniferdziura.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/08\/519T4SHJ6QL.jpg\" alt=\"hemingway\" width=\"200\" \/>While Ernest Hemingway was not a fan of bombastic language, this quote from <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/i> gives an excellent description of what it means for something &#8212; in this case, anger &#8212; to be <a href=\"\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/attenuate\">attenuated<\/A>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;His rage began to thin as he exaggerated more and more and spread his scorn and contempt so widely and unjustly that he could no longer believe in it himself.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The word <a href=\"\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/attenuate\">attenuate<\/a> often confuses people a bit &#8212; it means to make slender, weaken, or rarefy. It often means a combination of those things:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some critics of the reality show <i>19 Kids and Counting<\/i> suggest that parents of so many children must necessarily <i>attenuate<\/i> their attention, depriving each child of needed care. Others point out that the children seem happy, perhaps more so than many in more conventional families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, to <i>attenuate<\/i> affection is to weaken it by spreading it too thin. You could <i>attenuate<\/i> a piece of bubble gum by pulling on it until it became thin and weak.<\/p>\n<p>If you <i>attenuate<\/i> your GRE studies over too long a period of time, you&#8217;ll probably lose focus and start forgetting things. Full speed ahead!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Ernest Hemingway was not a fan of bombastic language, this quote from For Whom the Bell Tolls gives an excellent description of what it means for something &#8212; in this case, anger &#8212; to be attenuated. &#8220;His rage began to thin as he exaggerated more and more and spread his scorn and contempt so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7230,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions\/7230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}