Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use tenuous in a sentence

16 example sentences · adjective

Tenuous means thin in substance or consistency. Example: “The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.”

Examples of tenuous by meaning

adjectiveThin in substance or consistency.

  • The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.
  • Far from being amicable, the numbers seemed to turn their backs on each other, and I couldn't find a pair with even the most tenuous connection.

adjectiveInsubstantial.

  • His argument was not convincing in the debate, considering how tenuous it was.

adjectivePrecarious, dependent upon unreliable things.

  • Paulina's repeated, almost anxious iteration of the lawfulness of her actions serves as a reminder of women's tenuous stance before the law in early modern English society.1994, M. Lindsey Kaplan, Katherine Eggert, ““Good queen, my lord, good queen” - Sexual Slander and the Trials of Female Authority in “The...

More sentences with tenuous

  • It lost its already tenuous association with the sacred and became a wham-bam, all-u-can-eat, deep-fill stufferama.2004 December 5, Mimi Spencer, “Chanel bag. Tick. Fauchon chocs. Tick. Pata Negra ham. Tick.”, in The Guardian (UK), retrieved 17 Jun 2019. From the entry somewhere along the line
  • Reform here was a tenuous thing, dependent upon the ebb and flow of outsiders’ ambitions.1978, Angus W. McDonald, Jr., “Power”, in The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution: Elites and the Masses in Hunan Province, China…. From the entry Fujian
  • Tenuous breakthrus were made in the U.S.2007, Stuart Ward, Strange Days Indeed: Memories of the Old World (Fiction), →ISBN, page 202. From the entry breakthru
  • But the idea of co-maternity still seems limited and tenuous.2007 January 13, Angela Campbell, “Conceiving Parents Through Law”, in International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, volume 21…. From the entry co-maternity
  • The tenuous vaso vasorum therefore remains preserved in the naturally occurring state, a circumstance which improves vascular patency.1996, William E. Cohn and Ducksoo Kim, "Catheter apparatus and methodology for generating a fistula on-demand", US Patent 5830224, page 21. From the entry vaso vasorum
  • By very tenuous face climbing, we gained entry to the crack, which we followed to a tree beneath the big chimney.1979, American Alpine Journal, page 193. From the entry aid
  • Souls have substance, more tenuous than light.1922, Edgar Wallace, Captain of Souls, Small, Maynard and Company, page 206. From the entry super-supernatural
  • Henry’s government’s already tenuous hold on the country has largely evaporated during the unrest, other factions have attempted to fill the power vacuum.2022 September 16, Milo Milfort, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Andre Paultre, “Fuel Hike Plunges Haiti Into Near Anarchy”, in The New York Times…. From the entry power vacuum
  • And since over 80% of US SLCMs will be non-nuclear, the correlation between SLCM-capable launchers and US nuclear SLCMs is even more tenuous.2012, Jürgen Altmann, Joseph Rotblat, Verification of Arms Reductions: Nuclear, Conventional and Chemical, →ISBN. From the entry SLCM
  • As the sun moves in its path through the galaxy, it will not always be immersed in the tenuous intercloud region of the interstellar medium.1977, American Geophysical Union, Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics, volume 15. From the entry intercloud
  • Despite the impressive scope of its activity, Ottonian Christianization rested on insecure foundations, with few churches and only a tenuous hold on most of the East Elbian and Baltic populations.2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2017, page 83. From the entry East Elbian
  • Supported and authorized to act from Moscow, the Cossack leaders, including Mozhaev, maintain tenuous and deniable links to Russia to ensure they retain their freedom to act as volunteer paramilitaries.2014, “Little Green Men”: A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013–2014, Fort Bragg, North Carolina: The United…. From the entry deniable

Meaning of tenuous

  1. adjective Thin in substance or consistency.
  2. adjective Insubstantial.
  3. adjective Precarious, dependent upon unreliable things.

Full definition of tenuous

Questions about tenuous in a sentence

How do you use tenuous in a sentence?
Tenuous is used as an adjective. For example: “The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.”
What is a short sentence with tenuous?
“Souls have substance, more tenuous than light.”
What does tenuous mean?
Tenuous means thin in substance or consistency.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tenuous (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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