rarefy

Although these sculptures pay tribute to commercialism, they rarefy it to something austere — or at least as austere as anything with pulsing green lights can be.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2018

Of course it’s serious, and art is serious, but I’m not going to rarefy it.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 16, 2011

It contains moist air and a movable diaphragm or piston to rarefy it suddenly.

From Time Magazine Archive

The hot air in the smoke flues will warm the separating brick partition, and consequently rarefy the air in the ventilating flue.

From A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) by Calvin Cutter

But as such means are not at disposal, it becomes necessary to place the terminal in a bulb and rarefy the air in the same.

From Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency by Nikola Tesla

She is aware that she’s had a rarefied career.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026

In the same way that regional brands like Shake Shack and In-N-Out have maintained cult followings for their novelty, Cane’s has no doubt benefited from the same kind of rarefied air.

From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026

There are good to very good players sprinkled around the team, but the collective is decidedly average, at best, in the rarefied air of a World Cup.

From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026

His mental adjustment on how to react to failure, combined with a conditioning program that led him to lose 10 pounds and become faster and stronger, created a spring environment sending him into rarefied air.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2026

When I first arrived in Mqhekezweni I was regarded by some of my peers as a yokel who was hopelessly unequipped to exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the Great Place.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

After rarefying to 5,000 sequences per sample, a total of 307,572 unique sequences were contained in the 96 studies and 23,828 samples of the ‘QC-filtered’ Deblur 90-bp observation table.

From Nature ● Oct. 31, 2017

And thinning, with escaping pressure, rarefying so that I could feel the grasp of it in my lungs and the pin-pricks in my cheeks.

From Brigands of the Moon by Ray Cummings

On rarefying the gas, the formation of the brush was facilitated, but it was generally of a low squat form, very poor in light, and very similar on both the positive and negative surfaces.

From Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 by Michael Faraday

And with regard to their balsamic and aromatic nature, these qualities warm the stomach and expel wind, by rarefying the flatuous exhalations from chyle in the prima viæ.

From A Treatise on Foreign Teas Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, Entitled An Essay On the Nerves by Hugh Smith

Funnels for clearing ships' holds of foul air, on the principle of the rarefying power of heat.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Sir Edward Belcher