DIFFUSION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Diffusion

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/dɪfjˈuʒən/ Listen

noun

Diffusion n.

The act of diffusing, or the state of being diffused; a spreading; extension; dissemination; circulation; dispersion. "A diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition."

(Physiol.) The act of passing by osmosis through animal membranes, as in the distribution of poisons, gases, etc., through the body. Unlike absorption, diffusion may go on after death, that is, after the blood ceases to circulate.

Synonyms: Extension; spread; propagation; circulation; expansion; dispersion.

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Etymology of 'Diffusion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Diffusion" Quotes from Famous Books

... lay down, in a minute or two again got up and went on, his fear growing until, mainly through consciousness of itself, it ripened into abject terror. Loneliness seemed to have taken the shape of a watching omnipresent enemy, out of whose diffusion death might at any moment break in ...

— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness; particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, ...

— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... 1832 is only sixty years ago in time, yet since then there has been a striking development of conveniences, rapidity of travel, and arrangements for the diffusion of intelligence. People then still travelled in great part by aid of horses, the railroad having just begun its marvellous career. News, which now fly over continents and under oceans at lightning speed, then jogged on at stage-coach ...

— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... girls, were taught to read and write. Where there were no schools, fathers and mothers of the better kind gave their children the rudiments of learning. Though illiteracy was widespread, there is evidence to show that the diffusion of knowledge among the masses was making steady progress ...

— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... light. But he soon found in Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the general emphasis laid on German preeminence. This emphasis was mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept widespread. German femininity was assumed to ...

— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

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