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Dissipate vs Defuse - What's the difference?

dissipate | defuse |

As verbs the difference between dissipate and defuse

is that dissipate is to drive away, disperse while defuse is to remove the fuse from (a bomb, etc) or defuse can be (obsolete) to disorder; to make shapeless.

dissipate

English

Verb

(dissipat)
  • To drive away, disperse.
  • * Cook
  • I soon dissipated his fears.
  • * Hazlitt
  • The extreme tendency of civilization is to dissipate all intellectual energy.
  • To use up or waste.
  • * Bishop Burnet
  • The vast wealth was in three years dissipated .
  • * 1931 :
  • So much for the effort and ingenuity of Montmartre. All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word "dissipate'"—to ' dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something.
  • To vanish by dispersion.
  • defuse

    English

    Etymology 1

    Verb

    (Bomb disposal) (defus)
  • To remove the fuse from (a bomb, etc.).
  • To make less dangerous, tense, or hostile.
  • Etymology 2

    Compare (diffuse).

    Verb

    (defus)
  • (obsolete) To disorder; to make shapeless.
  • * 1605 , , I. iv. 2:
  • If but as well I other accents borrow / That can my speech defuse ,