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In the upper reaches of Chomolungma, known more familiarly as Mount Everest, the air is so rarefied—so much less dense than at lower elevations—that most climbers use supplemental oxygen in order to successfully complete their climb. This sense of rarefied, a word that comes from a combination of the Latin words rarus (“thin” or “rare”) and facere (“to make”), has been in use since the 1500s. A second, figurative sense of rarefied developed in the following century to describe things that can only be understood by a small or select group, i.e. one “thinned” from the majority of people by dint of their unique experience, expertise, or status. It’s this sense that we use when we say that to successfully summit Chomolungma puts one in rarefied company—just over 6,000 people have made it to the top at the time of this writing.
Examples of rarefied in a Sentence
Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 3 June 2025
And so Marie Curie and Sojourner will remain part of a rarefied clique.
—IEEE Spectrum, 31 May 2025
So the production scoured listings of potential real-world candidates in rarefied mountain communities in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and various locales in Colorado, before looking at possibilities in Whistler, British Columbia.
—Adam B. Vary, Variety, 30 May 2025
That puts the movie in rarefied air, considering the top earners are 2018’s Black Panther ($40.2 million), 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($40.1 million), 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ($37.1 million) and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame ($36.9 million).
—Pamela McClintock, HollywoodReporter, 28 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for rarefied
Cite this Entry
“Rarefied.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rarefied. Accessed 10 Jun. 2025.
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