Library / English Dictionary

PERVADE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Spread or diffuse through

Example:

His campaign was riddled with accusations and personal attacks

Synonyms:

diffuse; imbue; interpenetrate; penetrate; permeate; pervade; riddle

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "pervade" is one way to...):

penetrate; perforate (pass into or through, often by overcoming resistance)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "pervade"):

spiritise; spiritize (imbue with a spirit)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

pervasion (the process of permeating or infusing something with a substance)

pervasive (spreading or spread throughout)

Credits

 Context examples: 

She had never been staying there before, without being struck by it, or without wishing that other Elliots could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks, she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in the separate but very similar remark of Mr and Mrs Musgrove: So, Miss Anne, Sir Walter and your sister are gone; and what part of Bath do you think they will settle in?

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to her influence.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Simple as the toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burned hair pervaded the house.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

So were his in the thrill that pervaded him; nor did he realize how much that was radiant and melting in her eyes had been aroused by what she had seen in his.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As to our own representative, the well-known athlete and international Rugby football player, E. D. Malone, he looks trained to a hair, and as he surveyed the crowd a smile of good-humored contentment pervaded his honest but homely face.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

While this attack lasted, the family lived in constant fear of a conflagration, for the odor of burning wood pervaded the house at all hours, smoke issued from attic and shed with alarming frequency, red-hot pokers lay about promiscuously, and Hannah never went to bed without a pail of water and the dinner bell at her door in case of fire.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Led by her, I passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)