Osmose
[ahz-MOZ]
Part of speech: verb
Origin: English, 19th century
1.
Pass by or as if by osmosis.
Examples of Osmose in a sentence
"When the good cherries are in season, news of their arrival osmoses through the neighborhood."
"I don’t follow the news because I know the big stories will osmose their way to me eventually."
About Osmose
“Osmose” is a back-formation, created out of the word “osmosis.” “Osmosis” itself is from the Greek “ὠσμός” (“ōsmós”), meaning “push.”
Did you Know?
Osmosis, the process by which water and other solvents pass through membranes, was first documented in the mid-1700s by French scientists, and by the 1800s, the word had moved into English. While this was an exciting new scientific idea, the notion that one thing could pass into another simply through contact with it made a great metaphor for the way knowledge moves among people. By 1900, “osmosis” was being used to describe the state of absorbing ideas and knowledge we don’t notice ourselves taking in. Within a few decades, the verb “osmose” had been created to describe the action of absorbing ideas in that way.
