From Latin dēnsus (thick, crowded, closelypacked, compact), of uncertain ultimate PIE origin; a possible reconstruction is *dens- (thick, compressed), though the root is not universally agreed upon. The word entered English in the 15th century carrying the physical sense of closely packed matter: dense fog, dense forest, dense material. By the 19th century the figurative sense of mentally thick or slow — too dense for ideas to penetrate — had developed, following
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Both 'dense' and 'thick' are used to mean 'stupid' in English — 'he's a bit dense,' 'she's thick as a plank.' German 'dicht' (dense, tight) and 'dick' (thick) follow the same pattern, with 'dickköpfig' (thick-headed) meaning stubborn. The metaphorworks across many languages: a dense or thick mind is one that ideas