| / English Dictionary |
PROFUSION
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The property of being extremely abundant
Example:
the idiomatic richness of English
Synonyms:
cornucopia; profuseness; profusion; richness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("profusion" is a kind of...):
abundance; copiousness; teemingness (the property of a more than adequate quantity or supply)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "profusion"):
overgrowth (a profusion of growth on or over something else)
greenness; verdancy; verdure (the lush appearance of flourishing vegetation)
wilderness (a bewildering profusion)
Context examples:
The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see it.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The laurels at Maple Grove are in the same profusion as here, and stand very much in the same way—just across the lawn; and I had a glimpse of a fine large tree, with a bench round it, which put me so exactly in mind!
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Alone, I should have been ignorant of the names of these giant growths, but our men of science pointed out the cedars, the great silk cotton trees, and the redwood trees, with all that profusion of various plants which has made this continent the chief supplier to the human race of those gifts of Nature which depend upon the vegetable world, while it is the most backward in those products which come from animal life.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The vegetation had again changed, and only the vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and odontoglossum.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
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