Definition of "effluence" [ef•flu•ence]

• The act or an instance of flowing out. (noun)
• Something that flows out or forth; an emanation: "tremendous emotional effluences that affected blocks of people at a time, causing them to walk faster” ( Coleman Dowell). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is dispensed from the sun?"
• "One kind of effluence goes from the perceiving organ to the object of perception; another kind goes from the object of perception to the organ."
• "He divined it in the way the girl looked at the young painter, and in his air of possession; and as Philip sat with them he felt a kind of effluence surrounding them, as though the air were heavy with something strange."