pervade

What it means

1. transitiveTo be in every part of; to spread through; to permeate.

   Cruel wars pervade history.

   3 more examples

   "I ought to arise and go forth with timbrels and with dances; but, do you know, I am not inclined to revels? There has been a little—just a very little bit too much festivity so far …. Not that I don't adore dinners and gossip and dances; not that I do not love to pervade bright and glittering places.[…]"

   1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter II, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.

   1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC

   Even at the busiest periods, an air of quiet orderliness pervades the hall, and the first impression gained by the traveller is one of efficiency, neatness and cleanliness.

   1951 October, H. A. Vallance, “Across Denmark by Lyntog”, in Railway Magazine, page 658

In a sentence

Cruel wars pervade history.

Where it comes from

1. Latinpervādō
2. Latinpervādō
3. Englishpervade

Learned borrowing from Latin pervādō.