Pervasive

How to spell pervasive

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pervasive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pervasive mean?

1. adjectiveSpreading widely throughout an area, group, or system, so as to be present everywhere.

Pervasive in a sentence

• The smell of fresh paint was pervasive throughout the new office.

• Corruption had become so pervasive that no department was untouched.

Where does pervasive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb pervadere, meaning literally 'to go through' or 'to spread throughout', formed from the prefix per-, meaning 'through', and the verb vadere, meaning 'to go' or 'to walk'. The same vadere root lies behind words such as 'invade' (to go in) and 'evade' (to go out of, to escape), which makes the family of meaning easy to picture: something that moves through everything around it. The Latin past participle stem pervas- gave rise to the adjective, and English assembled 'pervasive' from it, with the noun 'pervasion' appearing earlier. The adjective entered English in the mid 1700s with the sense of spreading widely and being present throughout. Remembering that the middle is the 'go' root vadere helps fix the single 's' spelled '-sive', echoing 'invasive' and 'evasive' rather than a '-cive' ending.

How the word is built

• per- (through, throughout)
• vas (from Latin vadere: to go)
• -ive (adjective suffix)