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suffuse

/səˈfjuːz/verb, adjective

suffuse is a verb meaning “To spread through or over (something), especially as a liquid, colour or light; to bathe” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-U-F-F-U-S-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 35 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does suffuse mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To spread through or over (something), especially as a liquid, colour or light; to bathe.

    The entire room was suffused with a golden light.

  2. 2

    To spread through or over in the manner of a liquid.

    The warmth suffused his cold fingers.

  3. 3

    To pour underneath.

adjective

  1. 1

    Suffused; diffuse.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce suffuse?

  • US /səˈfjuːz/

Suffuse has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-suffuse.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of suffuse

  • suffuses present, singular, he/she/it
  • suffusing participle, present
  • suffused participle, past
  • more suffuse comparative
  • most suffuse superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is suffuse?

Suffuse appears about once in every 35 million words in written English, the 180,281st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Suffuse in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Germanüberziehen, bedecken, durchfluten, erfüllen (to spread through or over something, especially…), durchziehen (to spread through or over in the manner of a…)
Portugueseinfundir (to spread through or over something, especially…)
Spanishrepartir (to spread through or over something, especially…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does suffuse come from?

From Latin suffundō.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).