Literary notes about pervade (AI summary)
In literature, "pervade" is used to evoke a sense of something gradually and completely diffusing through a setting, emotion, or idea. Writers often employ it to describe atmospheres that envelop a physical space—as when an oppressive gloom seems to pervade a place [1] or a gentle, almost imperceptible fragrance fills a room [2]—and to convey emotions that saturate characters and environments alike, such as an overwhelming sense of joy or melancholy that appears to pervade an entire gathering [3, 4]. The term thus functions as a bridge between the tangible and the abstract, imbuing a scene with an all-encompassing quality that shapes both its mood and meaning [5, 6].
- And in 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom and distress that pervade this place.
— from American Negro SlaveryA Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips - He remembered Baglioni's remark about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber.
— from Mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne - “An almost irrepressible joyousness,” she says, “shone from his face and seemed to pervade his whole body.
— from A Life of Walt Whitman by Henry Bryan Binns - By this time considerable alarm seemed to pervade the whole assembly, and some confusion ensued, in consequence of several leaving their seats.
— from The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssière; and History of a Bible by Sampson Vryling Stoddard Wilder - All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - These may seem isolated cases, but the principles on which they rest pervade the whole structure of language.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
