From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdensedense /dens/ ●●○ adjective 1 NEARmade of or containing a lot of things or people that are very close together SYN thickdense undergrowth/forest/woodland/jungle etc A narrow track wound steeply up through dense forest. the city's dense population2 DNdifficult to see through or breathe indense fog/smoke/cloud dense black smoke3 informal not able to understand things easily SYN stupid Am I being dense? I don’t quite understand.4 ALa dense piece of writing is difficult to understand because it contains a lot of information or uses complicated language5 HP technical a substance that is dense has a lot of mass in relation to its size Water is eight hundred times denser than air. —densely adverb a densely populated area —denseness noun [uncountable]COLLOCATIONSnounsdense forest/wood/woodland/jungleTheir helicopter could not land because of the dense jungle.dense undergrowth (=plants, bushes etc growing around and under trees)The bird is found mainly in woodland where there is dense undergrowth.dense vegetation (=plants in general)The land around here is covered with dense vegetation.dense foliage (=leaves of a plant or tree)a thick bushy plant with dense foliagea dense covering of somethingsteep-sided mountains with a dense covering of treesa dense massa dense mass of equatorial rainforesta dense network of somethingThe country is served by a dense network of roads.a dense population (=a lot of people living close together)Britain has a particular problem because of dense population.
Examples from the Corpus
dense• Sometimes you just seem so dense!• Lais's hand shook as she downed the dense amber liquid.• The acacia grove, like a dense cloud, became a dark backdrop for her.• Indeed, Beautiful World is a dense collection of tightly constructed tracks characterized by their complexity and variety.• Coniferous forests, often dense, in taiga and on mountains, less often in other woods.• The overall effect is of information produced in a much less dense manner than is characteristic of written language.• As it develops a dense mat of roots, the depth of the mixture should be at least four inches.• I actually became interested in those dark, dense paragraphs of print.• a dense population• The candles were useless in the dense smoke, and it was many minutes before we could see.• dense smoke• The jungle is so dense you cannot walk through it.dense undergrowth/forest/woodland/jungle etc• Army helicopters could not land because of the mountainous terrain and dense jungle.• Day 9 Ottawa-Orilla Head north into stunning wilderness country, a region of sparkling lakes, rushing streams and dense forests.• Not like the Harz with its dense forests.• Inmates were paid 50 cents a day for the back-breaking chore of clearing right of way through dense forests and laying track.• We watched the men bundle up their parachutes and move off through the dense undergrowth, chopping at it with jungle machetes.• As the pace of deforestation picked up, the area of land covered by dense forest declined considerably.• She gazed at the dense forest, then up at the sky.dense fog/smoke/cloud• Almost the entire journey was through the plain, now covered in dense fog.• It flings its fine hairs in the face of the assailant, in a dense cloud.• The candles were useless in the dense smoke, and it was many minutes before we could see.• The acacia grove, like a dense cloud, became a dark backdrop for her.• The Magellan radar-mapping mission was designed to penetrate the dense cloud layer and return detailed radar images of the surface geology.• It appears that the Leonids contain a dense cloud of dust released during recent stressful passages of comet Tempel-Tuttle by the Sun.• There was dust everywhere - the shop was filled with a dense fog of it.• Standard polyurethane foam ignites rapidly, forming dense clouds of smoke and toxic vapour as it does so.Origin dense (1400-1500) Latin densus 