[ad. L. tenuitās thinness, f. tenuis thin: see -ITY. So F. ténuité (15th c.).]
1. Thinness of form or size; slenderness.
1578. Banister, Hist. Man, IV. 47. The other [muscle] … sustayneth his sinewie tenuitie to the hard tunicle of the eye.
a. 1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., 8. If we consider … the many parts thereof, that either in respect of their tenuity or distance escape the reach of our Senses.
1777. Johnson, 22 Sept., in Boswell. He is not well-shaped; for there is not the quick transition from the thickness of the forepart, to the tenuity—the thin part—behind, which a bull-dog ought to have.
1802. Paley, Nat. Theol., ix. (ed. 2), 150. The tenuity of these muscles [in the iris of the eye and the drum of the ear] is astonishing.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. i. 3. Mica … is sufficiently tough to furnish films of extreme tenuity:
1882. Nature, 12 Oct., 587/1. Platinum has been rolled into sheets which … reach the surprising tenuity of less than one twenty-five-thousandth of an English inch.
2. Thinness of consistence; dilute or rarified condition; rarity.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 740. By reason of this tenuitie and continuitie when oile doth froth or fome, it suffereth no winde or spirit to enter in.
1658. R. White, trans. Digby’s Powd. Symp. (1660), 23. It becomes part of the aire, which in regard of its tenuity is invisible unto us.
1759. Johnson, Rasselas, vi. Precipices … so high as to produce great tenuity of air.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. Th., 415. The tenuity and fineness of the mud.
1860. Maury, Phys. Geog. Sea (Low), i. § 27. Air may be expanded to an indefinite degree of tenuity.
b. Faintness (of light); thinness (of voice).
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., IV. xliv. 206. The great distance of the planet Saturn, and the tenuity of its light.
1832. L. Hunt, Sir R. Esher, 123. He ran into high tenuities of voice.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Note-Bks., II. 10. A shrill, yet sweet, tenuity of voice.
3. fig. Meagerness; slightness, slenderness, weakness, poverty.
1535–6. Act 27 Hen. VIII., c. 42 § 1. By reason of the tenuytie of lyvyng.
1648. Eikon Bas., xvii. 178. The tenuity and contempt of Clergy-men will soon let them see, what a poore carcasse they are, when parted from the influence of that Head, to whose Supremacy they have been sworn.
a. 1734. North, Lives (1826), I. Pref. 14. My tenuity of style and language.
1867. Burton, Hist. Scot. (1873), I. x. 343. The tenuity of the evidence.
1895. Pop. Sci. Monthly, July, 386. Any cause which makes for intellectual tenuity.
1920. J. Middleton Murry, Aspects of Literature, 67. Keats was not a poet of definite and deliberate plans, which indeed are incident to a certain tenuity of soul; his decisions were taken not by the intellect, but by the being.
¶ 4. ‘Simplicity, or plainness. (Obs.)’, Webster, 1864: hence in later Dicts. App. an error.
