Word of the Day

: November 10, 2023

suffuse

verb suh-FYOOZ

What It Means

To suffuse something is to spread over it or fill it, either literally or figuratively. The word suffuse is usually encountered in literary contexts.

// Natural sunlight suffused the room as she opened the blinds.

// The novel tells a difficult story, but it is suffused with hope.

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suffuse in Context

"How to work, what to work on, assessing what’s been made. These are the questions that suffuse every artist’s career. They start with nothing, mostly without being asked, and sail into the unknown with a passion to make something." — Margaret Heffernan, The Guardian (London), 23 Apr. 2023

Did You Know?

The Latin word suffundere, ancestor to suffuse by way of Latin suffūsus, has various meanings that shed light on our modern word, among them "to pour on or in (as an addition)" and "to fill with a liquid, color, or light that wells up from below." It’s no surprise, then, that suffuse refers to the action of fluid or light spreading over or through something, as when light fills a dark room when you crack open a door. Suffundere is a blend of the prefix sub- ("under" or "beneath") and the verb fundere ("to pour" or "to send forth"). Other English verbs related to fundere continue the theme of pouring or spreading: diffuse ("to pour out and spread freely"), effuse ("to pour or flow out"), transfuse ("to cause to pass from one to another"), and the verb fuse itself when it's used to mean "to meld or join."