concentrate

Formsconcentrates, concentrating, concentrated

Pluralconcentrates

1. 1
   verbintransitive

   To focus your thought or attention on a single task or idea.

   Please concentrate on the road while you are driving.

   He found it hard to concentrate after hearing the bad news.

   Similarfocus

   Note

   Attention is what gets gathered here. The verb normally takes on before whatever holds the mind (concentrate on the road), but it also stands alone, as in the plea "Let me concentrate!" Groups can do it too: in Modern Railways in 1962, Brian Haresnape describes a committee that "concentrated on two main objectives." Its near neighbors are think and bury, as in burying oneself in a task.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A substance in condensed form, made stronger by removing liquid or other bulk.

   The factory ships tomato concentrate in large steel drums.

   Frozen juice concentrate keeps for months in the freezer.

   Similarextract, essence

   Note

   The adjective turned into a noun, the same move French made with concentré and German with Konzentrat. The noun usually follows the name of its source, as in orange concentrate and tomato concentrate. It takes the plural concentrates when several kinds are meant.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To increase the strength of a liquid or ore while reducing its bulk, by removing useless or excess material.

   The plant concentrates the brine until salt crystals begin to form.

   Engineers concentrate low-grade ore to raise its metal content before smelting.

   Similarcondense, reduce, enrich, thicken

   Oppositedilute

   Note

   Here gathering becomes strengthening: potency goes up as bulk goes down. The chemist concentrates an acid by evaporation, and the miner concentrates ore by washing away useless material. The method usually follows by. The natural opposite is dilute, which adds bulk and weakens, and the product of the process has a name of its own, the noun for a condensed substance.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To bring or direct things toward a common center; to gather them into a single body, mass, or force.

   The commander concentrated all available forces along the river.

   Investors concentrate their holdings in a handful of large stocks.

   Similarmass, gather, focus, consolidate, centralize

   Oppositedisperse, scatter, spread, diversify

   Note

   A verb that works in both directions: a commander concentrates troops, and troops concentrate. That two-way use is why grammarians call it ergative, and it ties this sense to the coming-together meaning, where things gather on their own. The word entered English in the early 17th century, from the Romance family of French concentrer and Italian concentràre or directly from Latin concentrō, alongside an earlier form, concentre.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To approach or meet at a common center; to come together and consolidate.

   The protesters concentrated in the main square by midday.

   Severe storms often concentrate along the warm front.

   Similargather, converge, congregate, cluster, mass

   Oppositedisperse, scatter, spread, diverge

   Note

   Things come together under their own momentum here, with no one doing the gathering: population tends to concentrate in cities. The place usually follows in, and the past participle readily describes a distribution. Edwin Black, in Internal Combustion (2006), writes of ancient slag, "about a third of it concentrated in Iberia."

6. 6
   adjective

   Concentrated; in a dense, undiluted form rather than thinned out or spread apart.

   It is, when good, a concentrate yellow.

   1758, Robert Dossie, The Handmaid to the Arts

   Subtracting the liters of concentrate fluid required in the diluted operation.

   2011, v. 80/1, Optimizing Use of Aircraft Deicing & Anti-icing Fluids (ACRP)

   Similarundiluted, condensed, dense

   Oppositedilute, diluted, weak

   Note

   An adjective taken straight from the Latin participle concentrātus, so it means what concentrated means without the -ed ending. Robert Dossie, in The Handmaid to the Arts (1758), could praise a pigment as "a concentrate yellow." Everyday English now uses concentrated instead. The short form survives in technical writing on deicing fluids, where "concentrate fluid" is hard to tell apart from the noun for a condensed substance placed before another noun.

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