PENETRATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... completely covered with them. A single glance sufficed to convince us that no more suitable spot than this for a pirate's head-quarters could well be found, for any attempt on the part of the uninitiated to penetrate the intricacies of these multitudinous cays must inevitably have resulted in failure. Channel there was none—so far as we could see—or rather, there were hundreds of them, each more hopelessly impracticable than the other, for ...

— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... passed before any change came. The deafening peals of thunder seemed as though they would never lessen in tone. The night-like heavens seemed as though no sun could ever hope to penetrate them again. And the streaming rain—was there ever such a deluge since the ...

— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... dodok, formerly insisted upon, is still observed by the native to his European masters, the humble posture giving place to kneeling on a nearer approach. The kind proprietor of the Soekaboemi Hotel offers every facility to those guests anxious to penetrate below the surface of Soendanese life, placing his carriage and himself at the disposal of the visitor, and affording a mine of information otherwise unattainable, for books on Java are few and far between, and the work of Sir Stamford Raffles continues the best authority on island life and customs, ...

— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... looked at the waters rushing past like a mill race on the further side of the island, as the tide was rising, and he explained to me that it was this rush which makes the neighbourhood of Scarthey so dangerous to unwary crafts; we went down into the sea-caves which penetrate deep under the ruins.—They say that in olden days there was a passage under the rocky causeway that led as far as the old Priory, but all traces of it ...

— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... has overhung your path, and therefore to a station high enough for the survey, all that meets the eye shall be as a dream of poetry itself. The deep folds of white vapour fill up glen and hollow, till the summit of the mountains, near and far away—far as sight itself can penetrate—are only seen tinged with the early radiance of the sun, the whole so combined as to appear a limitless plain of variegated marble, peaceful as heaven, and solemnly serene as eternity. What Winter writes with his frozen finger I need not state. When the venerable old man, Gladstanes, perished ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

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