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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
Oren Hartov, Robb Report, 4 July 2024
That position offers her a connection to the real world of people who struggle to get ahead in a way that few inside the rarefied atmosphere of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. can understand.
—Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, 3 July 2024
Instead, Wiig takes center stage as Maxine Simmons, an ambitious social climber in the rarefied Palm Beach society.
—Jordan Riefe, Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2024
Stephen Merchant Monologues on The Late Show Disguising prepared stand-up material as talk-show chat is a rarefied, historic art.
—Bethy Squires, Vulture, 7 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for rarefied 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rarefied.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Rarefied.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rarefied. Accessed 15 Jul. 2024.
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