DIFFUSION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far away, in the pastures of the wilderness, ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... subjects a path of continual progress toward the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity.... It clusters around a series of essentially Christian conceptions—equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the elevation of the poor, the love of truth, and the diffusion of liberty. It revolves around the ideal of Christianity, and represents its spirit without its dogmatic system and its supernatural narratives. From both of these it unhesitatingly recoils, while deriving all its strength and nourishment from ...

— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Starkfield with a good chance of getting there for supper. But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending ...

— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archaeologist to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by the name of the STONE PERIOD, a technical and ...

— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... no effort untried which might in any manner promote the interests of the cause, regarded as one important means to this end the diffusion of knowledge concerning that unknown and mysterious region. He had therefore procured from Africa specimens of some of the actual products of the country, to which he called the attention of the Premier. The specimens of ivory and gold, of ebony and mahogany, ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

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