rarefied

adjective

rar·​e·​fied ˈrer-ə-ˌfīd 

variants or less commonly rarified

1

: being less dense

2

: of, relating to, or interesting to a select group : esoteric

3

: very high

Did you know?

In the upper reaches of Chomolungma, known more familiarly as Mount Everest, the air is so rarefied—so much less dense than at lower elevations—that most climbers use supplemental oxygen in order to successfully complete their climb. This sense of rarefied, a word that comes from a combination of the Latin words rarus (“thin” or “rare”) and facere (“to make”), has been in use since the 1500s. A second, figurative sense of rarefied developed in the following century to describe things that can only be understood by a small or select group, i.e. one “thinned” from the majority of people by dint of their unique experience, expertise, or status. It’s this sense that we use when we say that to successfully summit Chomolungma puts one in rarefied company—just over 6,000 people have made it to the top at the time of this writing.

Examples of rarefied in a Sentence

It's difficult to breathe in the rarefied air near the mountain's peak.

Recent Examples on the Web

Even in the rarefied realm of F1 racing, where top teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the service of speed, Mercedes simply gave up. —IEEE Spectrum, 3 Feb. 2026

But Bowman is headed to rarefied air. —Eric Sondheimer, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2026

For me, the chance to step outside the narrowness of the American worldview at large—yes, even as many of us operate within rarefied cultural bubbles—was perhaps the most valuable takeaway (and many from our cohort remain in close contact). —Catherine Taft, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2026

Other guests included medical executives and a lobbyist, which looked bad, and the restaurant was one of California’s most rarefied, the French Laundry, playing into Newsom’s reputation as a rule-bending swell. —Nathan Heller, New Yorker, 1 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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