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suffuse

UK/səˈfjuːz/US/səˈfjuːz/
verbC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: suffused, suffuses, suffusing

To suffuse is to spread through and fill with colour or feeling. Suffused with light, suffused with colour, her face suffused with pleasure.

It is nearly always passive and takes with, and the spreading is gradual and complete rather than sudden. The Latin means to pour beneath, which is the image of colour rising under the skin.

Definitions of suffuse

  1. 1verbsuffuseTo spread through and fill with colour or feeling.C2

    “As the sun rose, the sky was suffused with pink and gold.”

suffuse is a spreading.

Where it comes from

Latin suffundere means to pour beneath, from sub plus fundere, to pour.

  1. Latin

    suffundō

  2. English, today

    suffuse

From Latin suffundō.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

suffuse in the wild

  • Commercially produced sticky buns, however, are usually just baked in an aluminum loaf tin, which allows the topping to suffuse the buns, making them sticky throughout.

    Sticky bun

  • Forewing pale, and variegated with suffuse and fuscous.

    Trisula variegata

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.