Meaning: to pass through, to spread through, or to pervade. Also has a technical sense in the dairy industry, meaning a watery
by-product which contains lactose, water, vitamins and minerals; i.e. some of the things that permeate milk. There have been several scare-campaigns in Australia about the use of this product to even out fat or sugar levels in milk.
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| Semantically impossible. |
Usefulness: 5 (Only for the second meaning, and my apologies in advance for the rant you're about to be subjected to. My language snark levels are actually decreasing with age and education, but blatant contradictions of meaning frustrate me no end, particularly when inflicted by not-very-good coffee chains far too early on a Saturday morning. Given the definition above, how can
anything be free of permeates, except possibly the physicists' hypothetical ideal vacuum? Even used in its technical dairy sense, milk permeate comes from milk, and everything in it is in milk - hence the name
permeate - so saying that various milks are
permeate free is
ridiculous. If it actually is permeate free, it's not milk, whatever milk
is - and if you'd like more discussion on
that, I recommend the
Gruen Transfer milk episode. /rant)
Logofascination: 1 (I am interested in how long
permeate has had this meaning in the dairy industry, and whether I'm right in thinking it's linked to the geological use of permeate, but am yet to find an answer.)
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