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

Through the years Brent, the oil, developed into something more rarefied and abstract than the output of one petroleum deposit. —Harmeet Kaur, CNN Money, 11 Mar. 2026

That hardly seems sufficient for a UCLA program that’s regularly supposed to be breathing rarefied air without caveats or qualifiers. —Los Angeles Times, 8 Mar. 2026

That’s rarefied air for two schools that spend half of the year (or more) obsessed with football. —Austin Meek, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2026

The brand offers a cohesive alpine wardrobe that performs at elevation and also dazzles in the ski world’s most rarefied spaces. —Todd Plummer, Robb Report, 25 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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