Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To pass slowly through small openings or pores; ooze.
  • intransitive verb To enter, depart, or become diffused gradually.
  • noun A place on land or underwater where a liquid or gas oozes out of the ground.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To ooze or percolate gently; flow gently or drippingly through pores; trickle.
  • To drain off: said of any wet thing laid on a grating or the like to drain: as, let it seep there.
  • noun A small exudation of ground-water; a small spring.

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

  • intransitive verb Scot. & U. S. To run or soak through fine pores and interstices; to ooze.

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

  • noun a small spring, pool, or other place where liquid from the ground (e.g. water, petroleum or tar) has oozed to the surface
  • noun moisture that seeps out; a seepage
  • verb to ooze, or pass slowly through pores or other small openings

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

  • verb pass gradually or leak through or as if through small openings

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration of dialectal sipe.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant of sipe, from Middle English sipen, from Old English sipian, from Proto-Germanic *sīpōnan, frequentative of *sīpanan (compare Middle Dutch sīpen 'to drip', archaic German seifen 'to trickle blood'), from Proto-Indo-European *seib, *sib- 'to pour out, drip, trickle' (compare Latin sēbum 'suet, tallow', Ancient Greek εἴβω (eíbō) 'to drop, drip').

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Examples

  • He paused again, letting the name seep into the minds of those assembled and waiting for the general reaction.

    Doors Into Chaos Robert Greenberger 2001

  • One long hot breath followed by another causes clouds to seep from the bell.

    Johnny Mercer's Pier Paula Ray 2010

  • As he climbed to a higher altitude, the chemical continued to seep from the plane.

    mjh's blog — 2008 — March 2008

  • Not until the late '70s, however, did the phrase seep into the American cooking vocabulary.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2011

  • There are fragments of memory that seep from the short-term memory cache to the long-term memory in the recovery room as the drug wears off.

    Brad Ideas - Comments anti 2010

  • A young woman sitting next to me was confused by the word seep and wanted to know whether it was spelled 'sepe' or 'seap', but to those who are at least as smart as a fifth grader, it spells bad news.

    The Reaction 2010

  • There are fragments of memory that seep from the short-term memory cache to the long-term memory in the recovery room as the drug wears off.

    Brad Ideas - Comments Anonymous 2010

  • There are fragments of memory that seep from the short-term memory cache to the long-term memory in the recovery room as the drug wears off.

    Brad Ideas - Comments Anonymous 2010

  • There are fragments of memory that seep from the short-term memory cache to the long-term memory in the recovery room as the drug wears off.

    Brad Ideas - Comments Morticia 2009

  • With Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in crisis -- yes, Roger really did do nothing about the impending loss of Lucky Strike and the ever odious Lee Garner Jr. really did let word seep out sooner than his promised 30 days -- Peggy performs well by giving her previously scheduled pitch on a campaign for one of Playtex's female products.

    William Bradley: Mad Men : Breach One "Chinese Wall" and You Just Want To Breach Another One An Hour Later William Bradley 2010

Comments

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  • a small spring, pool, or other place where liquid from the ground has oozed to the surface of the earth

    April 30, 2007