Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Spread; dispersed.
  • Spread out; extended; stretched.
  • Confused; irregular; wild; negligent.
  • In zoology, ill-defined; without definite edges: applied to colored marks when they appear to merge gradually into the ground-color at their edges, and especially to marks on the wings of butterflies and moths when the scales forming them become scattered at the edges.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Spread abroad; dispersed; loose; flowing; diffuse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of diffuse.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (of light rays) subjected to scattering by reflection from a rough surface or transmission through a translucent material
  • adjective (of light) transmitted from a broad light source or reflected

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It was an exquisite room, possibly thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass.

    CHAPTER XV 2010

  • But just caught the newly-refurbished Midland Hotel bathed in diffused late afternoon light.

    Chez Moi Peter Ashley 2008

  • He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened his sense of his own happiness.

    Swann's Way 2003

  • And it is nothing wonderful; if the devils are proved to cause those to be much worse hated who live not according to a part only of the word diffused

    ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 1819-1893 2001

  • So diffused is present day public ownership of stocks and bonds that the direction and control of corporations lies in non-ownership hands, - i.e., management.

    Quebec—Problems of Growth 1963

  • The wavelength, or the number of oscillations per second, in the light thus diffused is here the same as in the original ray of light.

    Nobel Prize in Physics 1930 - Presentation Speech 1931

  • It was an exquisite room, possibly thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass.

    The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London 1916

  • He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened his sense of his own happiness.

    Swann's Way Marcel Proust 1896

  • What we call diffused light on Earth, the grateful result of refraction, the luminous matter held in suspension by the air, the mother of our dawns and our dusks, of our blushing mornings and our dewy eyes, of our shades, our penumbras, our tints and all the other magical effects of _chiaro-oscuro_ -- this diffused light has absolutely no existence on the surface of the Moon.

    All Around the Moon Jules Verne 1866

  • The public discontent was soon diffused from the centre to the frontiers of the empire.

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206

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