a. [A syncopated formation from L. tenuis thin + -OUS; the etymologically regular form, preserving the L. stem tenui-, being TENUIOUS, now obs. or rare.]
1. Thin or slender in form; of small transverse measure or caliber; slim.
1656. [see TENUIOUS 1].
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., II. 134. The uppermost surface of the Quicksilver … is dilated into a tenuous Column, or Funicle.
1666. J. Smith, Old Age (1752), 77. A most tenuous vestment for the humours.
1822. Blackw. Mag., XII. 411. The spider … touches his tenuous line.
2. Thin in physical consistency; sparse; rare, rarified, subtle; unsubstantial.
1597. Lowe, Chirurg. (1634), 147. When the vaines are repleat with a tenous blood.
1635. J. Swan, Spec. M., v. § 2 (1643), 171. Their [wind and air] substances being too tenuous to be perceived.
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. xvi. 192. Air … is too subtile, too tenuous a substance.
1864. Sir T. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., IV. 456. Just as a tenuous film of breath, imperceptible to our senses, prevents the globules of mercury from coalescing.
1892. Leisure Hour, Aug., 706/1. A very tenuous medium called the ether exists everywhere.
1909. Eng. Rev., April, 70. Your dress brushed the shrubs: it was grey and tenuous.
3. fig. Slender, of slight importance or significance; meager, weak; flimsy, vague, unsubstantial.
a. 1817. T. Dwight, Theol. (1830), I. xv. 254. A subject perhaps as tenuous, and difficult to be fastened upon.
1858. Bushnell, Serm. New Life, 312. The tenuous and fickle impulse.
1881. Standard, 7 May. A more tenuous or unsatisfactory claim could hardly exist.
1903. Speaker, 9 May, 145/1. The poems of the three somewhat tenuous singers.
1905. Athenæum, 5 Aug., 166/1. [They] are sure to live as letters apart from … the tenuous story in which they are set.
1915. J. Troland, Weavers, 9, in Wild Posies, 22.
| Comrade, with thee, in tenuous thought, | |
| Some toilsome threads I stretched, and strove | |
| To claim,—as warp and woof I brought,— | |
| A corner for the thing I wove. |
Hence Tenuously adv., thinly, sparsely; Tenuousness, thinness, tenuity.
1892. Zangwill, Bow Mystery, i. When King Fog masses his molecules of carbon in serried squadrons in the City, while he scatters them tenuously in the suburbs.
1901. Yorksh. Post, 28 Nov., 6/6. The bubble … is better pricked than left to burst of its own tenuousness.
