PENETRATE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Penetrate

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/pˈɛnətrˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Penetrate v. t. (past & past part. penetrated; pres. part. penetrating)

To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to effect an entrance into; to pierce; as, light penetrates darkness.

To affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to touch with feeling; to make sensible; to move deeply; as, to penetrate one's heart with pity. "The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style."

To pierce into by the mind; to arrive at the inner contents or meaning of, as of a mysterious or difficult subject; to comprehend; to understand. "Things which here were too subtile for us to penetrate."

Penetrate v. i. To pass; to make way; to pierce. Also used figuratively. "Preparing to penetrate to the north and west." "Born where Heaven's influence scarce can penetrate." "The sweet of life that penetrates so near."

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Etymology of 'Penetrate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Penetrate" Quotes from Famous Books

... the American promontory opposite, "a young and handsome woman replied to the man's despairing gesture by silently pointing to heaven." The Wandering Jew may be gone, but the theater of that appalling prologue still exists unchanged. That sigh will penetrate the gloomy cell of the Abbe Faria, the frightful dungeons of the Inquisition, the gilded halls of Vanity Fair, the deep forests of Brahmin and fakir, the jousting list, the audience halls and the petits cabinets of kings of France, ...

— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... nitro-compounds, trinitrophenol, C6H2(NO2)3OH (picric acid), was investigated. If a concentrated solution of picric acid is brought into contact with pelt it will penetrate the latter completely in a few days; it is, however, difficult to fat-liquor the resultant leather, since the fat is absorbed only with difficulty. If a pelt treated in this way be dried, a soft but rather flat leather results, the ...

— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... Gardiner, so slowly and so deliberately that each word had time to penetrate the king's sensitive heart like the prick of a needle—"I think that she does not deem them criminals that call the holy book which you have written a work of hell; and that she has a great deal of sympathy for those heretics who will not ...

— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... far from the steps (nor could she be induced to penetrate further, though they would have made way for her) that only fragments reached her, but what ...

— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... glow of sunrise, never had he appeared so mysterious as at that moment. Even in the heat of excitement I stared at him in amazement, wishing in a hasty thought the confusion of the past few weeks had given me opportunity to penetrate the recesses of his mind, and therefrom retell you things better worth listening to than all the incident of my adventures. But now there was no time to think, ...

— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

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