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

They are earth's lumi-         naries, which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of 37:12 material sense and to permeate humanity with purer ideals.

From Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

The echoes shrieked and barked, the hissing balls seemed actually to rarefy the air, and then opaque smoke filled the vault.

From The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas père

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

The analytics website Data Golf has metrics that rate amateur players going back to 2010—and Koivun tops a list that puts him in rarefied company.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026

Such is the rarefied air they're breathing at this World Cup, what we said in previewing Haiti can be said again in looking forward to Morocco.

From BBC ● Jun. 19, 2026

Mary also knew that a native of a place so flat it was practically underwater would need a leg up before hiking for days in the rarefied altitude of the Wyoming mountains.

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly

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

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

A head of one hundred and eighty degrees is sufficient to diminish the weight of the air it contains to the extent of one-half, by rarefying it.

From Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne

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

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