v. [f. L. circumfūs, ppl. stem of circumfundĕre to pour around, to surround, encompass.]
1. trans. To pour, diffuse or spread (a fluid) around or about anything).
1648. Herrick, Hesper., On Julia’s Breath. All the spices of the East Are circumfused there.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., II. 101. This vast Element of Air, circumfused about this terraqueous Globe.
1819. Playfair, Nat. Phil., I. 305. An elastic fluid, circumfused about a solid.
2. To surround (a thing) on all sides with or in (a fluid medium or the like); to bathe. (The surrounding substance may itself be the subject.)
1605. B. Jonson, Masque Blackness, 72. In the lake … Appear’d a face, all circumfused with light.
1791. Cowper, Odyss., VII. 174. Ulysses … by Minerva thick with darkness circumfus’d.
1805. Wordsw., Prelude (1850), 222. The light of beauty did not fall in vain Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.
1818. Byron, Ch. Har., IV. lii. Glowing and circumfused in speechless love.
Hence Circumfused ppl. a., diffused or spread around; surrounding or enveloping as a fluid.
1596. Fitz-Geffrey, Sir F. Drake (1881), 43. Whose tops … Were damp’d with circumfused clouds from sight.
1649. Bulwer, Pathomyot., II. iv. 157. The circumfused skin … hath a voluntary motion.
1837. Fraser’s Mag., XVI. 666. Disperse into thin air the circumfused air.
