Pick up that little section of lead pipe; feel it in your hand. It’s heavier than you might’ve thought, maybe? It’s dense, in other words, right? Right.
Now, pick up that chunk of pumice, about the same size. What do you call that, in comparison to the pipe? Light? True, it is lighter than the pipe, but it could be just as heavy, if only it were bigger. Airy? Maybe, but even in a vacuum it would feel like it had the same weight, most likely. Sparse? No: It’s not a forest in your hand, after all.
The question is, when we’re talking about material objects, what’s the opposite of dense?
The answer, at the moment, is less dense, unsatisfactory because of our habit of using paired descriptions for physical properties (heavy/light, soft/hard, wet/dry, and so on). Once upon a time, though, dense had an opposite. Until the mid-19th century, the word was rare.
In fact, the earliest meaning of rare in English was precisely this one. The OED notes the word’s meaning as “[o]pposed to dense,” and provides the following example (from around 1420), among others:
The londis fatte, or lene, or thicke, or rare.
I don’t know what a londis is, and I’m intrigued by thicke as a stand-in for dense (as in a thicket, perhaps). But mostly, I’m thrilled to find rare used in this way.
One can imagine how, in the less dense Britain of the 15th century, a word like rare could move from describing a single object (as in, for example, “this rare piece of pumice”) to describing a collective object (“this rare forest”) to describing the likelihood of encountering individual objects while wandering through the realm (“the rare African swallow”).
Still, I propose we resuscitate rare‘s original meaning. I’ve looked for such a word many times, and so have others. To inspire you, I close with more examples from the OED:
Cvcumber in this mone is sowen rare. [C. 1420]
The Assemblie was so rare that they were not exceeding the number of nineteen Commissioners. [1610]
A projectile would travel a far greater distance through a rare medium like air, than through a dense medium like water. [1862]
Who wouldn’t want a word that can as readily describe cvcumbers as Commissioners, projectiles as londises? The chance to improve our language by looking to antiquated usage is (forgive me) a rare one.
10 Comments
The term “dense” itself is somewhat of a misnomer, as we discussed yesterday. Who knows how a measurement became an adjective. Something could be more dense or less dense, just as something has length, temperature, weight, et al. where long and short, hot and cold, heavy and light are the appropriate poles. Good luck reviving “rare.” May I suggest “dord” to replace “dense,” thereby unencumbering it from “density”?
Interesting thought. To take your weight example, something can have more or less weight, but it can also be heavier or lighter.
Could it be that there was once a word comparable to weight that described the dense/rare spectrum with no special affinity for one pole or the other?
Dord is incredible. And the guy’s right: Why not?
I think that the word “rare” is still in use. What I have encountered more frequently is “rarefied”, often used in the sense of a gas made less dense.
My son asked me the opposite of “dense” just today, and I am happy to have passed on this word to the next generation.
That’s excellent news Refael! Glad to hear a new generation is curious.
And I’d forgotten about rarefied—nice work.
I know this is late, but google just brought me here today.
Why not bouyant?
Glad you found me here, Aaron, and don’t worry about being late. English moves slowly enough that the issue’s still as relevant as it ever was!
As for your question, I’d argue against buoyant because it refers specifically to the property of floating. It means “less dense than a particular medium in which the object being described is floating or would float”—typically water, but sometimes air (as in the case of helium balloons).
It’s perhaps akin to using serious as the opposite of light: It’s the right word sometimes, but not all the time. Rare, I think, covers many more cases—including buoyancy (which it can imply, which a little extra work), for example, and sparseness (as in the “rare forest” example).
Of course, if you’re using dense to describe a person who’s slightly slow to catch on to things, rare won’t work at all. It seems appropriate mostly for physical properties (but I’ve not heard buoyant used outside the realm of the physical, either).
I appreciate your thoughtful responses. I can see ‘rare’ causing some confusion in statements such as
Helium is used to fill balloons because it is such a rare gas.
The Earth’s mantle is made of dense rocks such as olivine, but on the Earth’s surface these rocks are rare.
A dense fog is quite rare.
Either way, it is good to know that I am not the only person bothered by the lack of the perfect word. Concentration, which is very similar physically, has dilute, saturated, supersaturated, and concentrated to describe various points along its spectrum.
For another person’s attempt at a word to fill this linguistic vacuum, here is some context on ‘londis’.
Latin
Sed cum sint genera terrarum plurima, ut pinguis aut macra, spissa uel rara, sicca uel umida et ex his pleraque uitiosa, tamen propter seminum differentiam saepe necessaria maxime, sicut supra dixi, eligendus est pinguis ac resolutus ager, qui minimum laborem petit, fructum maximum reddit…..
Middle English
The londis fatte, or lene, or thicke, or rare, Or drie or moyst, and not withouten vice—ffor dyuers seed, yet, they right needful are…..
English (as translated in 1807)
But as there are many sorts of earth, as the rich or poor, dense or loose, dry or moist, and most of these inelegible……
Your points about the ambiguity across these two meanings of rare seem right on the money to me. And yes! English as a language is so muddled that there is almost never a “perfect word,” as you put it. It’s frustrating and at the same time, leads to rich conversations like this one. And as a creative writer, I have to say I’m glad for it, because it allows me some play in the language I choose that might not be there otherwise. (I’m not quite good enough with any other languages for this to be a fair comparison, but all the same.)
Thanks for your comments, and also for the interesting backstory on the word. It’s been a long time since I took Latin, but it was nice to spot the rara in there among the rest.
“Meat is very calorie dense, while fruits and vegetables are generally calorie rare.” The fact that I couldn’t phrase this as I wanted was killing me – until I came across this archaic little gem. I’m going to start using rare in this context whenever I can, and if anyone questions it I’ll just point them to this site.
Excellent! So glad I could help, Will.
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[...] (See http://www.devangoldstein.com/219/opposite-of-dense/ for the post I mentioned, which also looks into the history of English to find a better word to use that “light” or “not-dense.”) [...]
[...] fluid should be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in its pressure. Air can be considered a rare (i.e. not dense) [...]