While I was editing a client project the other day, I came across the word “defuse”, and I realized that it could be easy for people to confuse “diffuse” and “defuse”.
Here’s the difference:
Defuse
Defuse means to literally remove the fuse, as in the fuse of a bomb or a stick of dynamite. It doesn’t always have a literal meaning, however. Sometimes we use “defuse” to refer to the disarming of a metaphorical explosive, such as an escalating argument, a potential fight, or a backtracking politician spiralling out of control after being caught in a compromising situation.
Diffuse
Diffuse, on the other hand, means to spread out or disseminate. Diffusion, for example, is a phenomenon in physics when a substance spreads from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.
Diffusion is the reason why when we spray air freshener in one location of a room that we can smell it throughout the room after a few minutes. The air freshener will diffuse throughout the room.
Diffuse can also be an adjective meaning dispersed (of course) or wordy.