Definition of "pervasive" []

• Having the quality or tendency to pervade or permeate: the pervasive odor of garlic. (adjective)

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.

• "The child abuse investigators say they found enough evidence of multiple child abuse situations, of what they called a pervasive pattern of child sexual abuse on that ranch, that they needed to get all of the children off, and that's what they've done -- Don."
• "So how can the government, without what they call the pervasive and brooding commitment to secularism, which they think would be wrong, become necessarily involved because of our traditions, but not go too far?"
• "He blamed a culture of political correctness, which he described as pervasive even through the military."