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

It will be well also to compare such words as stupefy and stupidity, rarity and rarefy.

From The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric by Sherwin Cody

The air consequently was damp and gross, for want of stronger rays to open and rarefy it.

From The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch being parts of the "Lives" of Plutarch, edited for boys and girls by John S. (John Stuart) White

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

So far, Whoop has focused its marketing efforts on positioning itself as an aspirational brand worn by some of the fittest people in the world in the most rarefied spaces.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 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

For the first semester, I was one of three Black students in the school, and in that rarefied atmosphere I came to love my people more.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

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

The porous condition of the bone, which is here shown, is a result of a rarefying or rarefactive ostitis.

From Diseases of the Horse's Foot by Harry Caulton Reeks

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

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

The first will represent the ocean, and the latter an island made hot by the rays of the sun, and rarefying the air above it.

From The Ocean and its Wonders by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne