rarefied

adj

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

   “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.”

   “I'm not taking the stand of any moralist. I have done the whole S&M route: the costumes and all, so I'm not talking from any rarified point — that's very important. That I have experienced it, that I have lived it.”

   “One day, she had to present the children, dressing them formally and introducing them by their full titles, ahead of high tea with extended family. It had been a crash course into the rarefied world in which some Norland charges live.”

2. Elevated in style or nature, sublime; of high intellectual or moral value.
3. Less dense than usual; thin.

   “The air at high altitudes at the top of mountains is rarefied.”

verb

1. (form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of rarefy