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Definition
to spread; or to soften or calmor:
to be spread out (not concentrated) — sometimes implying a lack or organization or the use of too many words
- When the United States focused on terrorism, the movement went further underground and became more diffuse.
diffuse = spread out
- The lamp gives off a diffuse light.
- a large diffuse organization
- unrealistic and diffuse in her thinking
- Diffuse axonal injury is one of the most common and devastating types of traumatic brain injury.
- Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly.Dickens, Charles -- Little Dorrit
- A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood.Edgar Allan Poe -- The Pit and the Pendulum
- He took the list to the university president, and the situation was diffused.Mitch Albom -- Tuesdays with Morrie
- the tone of the diffused green light of the sea bottom.John Steinbeck -- The Pearl
- I smile as much as my bruised cheek will allow, hoping that will diffuse the tension.Veronica Roth -- Divergent
- They diffused and melted Janie, the room and the world into one comprehension.Zora Neale Hurston -- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel.Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The House of the Seven Gables
- As the sun went higher and left the eastern sky, the square of sunshine on the wall grew larger and diffuse, and the bright yellow color of early morning was gone.Leslie Marmon Silko -- Ceremony
- Though the sky was dense with cloud, a diffused light from some fragment of a moon had hitherto helped them a little.Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- The air of wealth and repose diffused about them seemed to comfort their neediness.James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- You can't see the sun through the thin buffer of cloud cover but the light is fully diffused, almost too bright to see.Chang-rae Lee -- Native Speaker
- Slowly the dawn grew to a pale light, diffused and shadowless.J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Fellowship of the Ring
- The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones.Henry David Thoreau -- Walden
- The clouds rolled in, diffusing the light so that it could have been morning or afternoon.Stephenie Meyer -- Breaking Dawn
- My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand.Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre
diffuse = spread out (not concentrated)
diffused = spread
diffused = calmed
diffused = faintly dispersed (spread without being concentrated or bright in any one area)
diffuse = soften or calm
diffused = mixed or spread into each other (so there are no defined edges)
diffused = spread
diffuse = more spread out and softer (less concentrated or less bright)