rarefied

Definition

Distant from the lives and everyday concerns of ordinary people; esoteric, exclusive, select.

Example Sentences

• "Philosophical debates can be quite rarefied."
• "The country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart on their stations up the mountain they looked down with imperfect discrimination on the belts of thicker life below."
• "Of course, Beaumont was the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an international crisis or a split in the Cabinet."