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Penetrative   Listen
Penetrative

adjective
1.
Having or demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions.  Synonyms: acute, discriminating, incisive, keen, knifelike, penetrating, piercing, sharp.  "Incisive comments" , "Icy knifelike reasoning" , "As sharp and incisive as the stroke of a fang" , "Penetrating insight" , "Frequent penetrative observations"
2.
Tending to penetrate; having the power of entering or piercing.  Synonym: penetrating.  "A cold penetrating wind" , "A penetrating odor"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Penetrative" Quotes from Famous Books



... The valuable content of his message, so far as he succeeds in delivering one, the ideas with which his words are freighted, bear the marks of the slow accumulations of spiritual experience, and they reveal the rich and penetrative influence of the social group in which the mystic's inner life formed and ripened. They have a history ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... to penetrative wounds (because of the important function of this joint and its large capsule, which when inflamed discharges synovia in a manner that closure of such an open joint is seldom possible) a ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... not it is practical to take up the work depends upon the nature of the output. If the sole product of the hardening department consists of a 1.10 carbon case or harder, requiring a strong highly energized material of deep penetrative power such as that used in the carburizing of ball races, hub-bearings and the like, it would be best to dispose of the used material to some concern whose product requires a case with from 0.70 to 0.90 ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... all! You have laughed at my occult tendencies, sneered at my Theosophy, but I can now, alas! give you convincing proof of the penetrative power of the one, the sustaining power of the other. I became so nervous at your continued silence and absence that I did what I had promised you not to do—went out in my astral to hunt for you—and I found you! Would to God I had never tried! ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... the fourth step my reason returned to me, and I returned to Halicarnassus and—kicked him. That sounds very dreadful and horrible, and it is, if you are thinking of a great, brutal, brogan kick, such as a stupid farmer gives to his patient oxen; but not, if you mean only a delicate, compact, penetrative punch with the toe of a tight-fitting gaiter,—addressed rather to the conscience than the shins, to the sensibilities rather than the senses. The kick masculine is coarse, boorish, unmitigated, predicable only of Calibans. The kick feminine is expressive, suggestive, terse, electric,—an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... little startled. Then, as she met Nan's gentle, penetrative glance, she presented a sudden blank of non-comprehension, most telling on such occasions, and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... Carondelet was, has presented her stern to the enemy, she has thrown up the game, barring some fortunate accident. The aggregate weight of metal discharged by each ironclad from all its guns was nearly the same,[12] but the Arkansas had a decided advantage in penetrative power by her four 6.4-inch rifles. Her sides, and probably her bow, were decidedly stronger than those of her opponent; but whatever the relative advantages or disadvantages under other circumstances, the Carondelet had now to fight her fight with two 32-pounders opposed to two VIII-inch shell-guns, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... poetry, and best in poetry because there most concentrated and most penetrative, lies crystallized experience at hand for all who need it. It is not difficult to find, although no one can find it for you. It is not necessarily exalted, romantic, passionate; it may be comfortable, homely, gentle or hearty, vigorous ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... missile which, when it strikes a bone, flattens out and splatters, creating a jagged wound which it is almost impossible to treat or heal. The Germans, in ordinary, use a steel jacketed bullet which possesses high penetrative powers, while the French at the beginning of the war were using the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... Hilda beheld a venerable figure with hair as white as snow, and a face strikingly characterized by benevolence. It bore marks of thought, however, and penetrative insight; although the keen glances of the eyes were now somewhat bedimmed with tears, which the aged shed, or almost shed, on lighter stress of emotion than would elicit them from ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... unconsciously, tried to imitate it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined one at that time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous opponent, yet withal he had immense self-command. On the whole, he was generally regarded chiefly as a man of penetrative intellect and sarcastic wit; but under all this I discerned a spirit so true, so delicate and tender, so touched [30] with a profound and exquisite, though concealed, sensibility, that he won my admiration, respect, and affection in an equal degree. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... in general it may be said that they bear witness alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the penetrative power of his intellect. The wide range of his subjects, however, deprives his papers when taken together of the weight which might attach to a series of related discussions. And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... delicate manipulation of mosaics. Yet Von Glauben's large hand was gentler than a woman's in its touch and gift of healing,—no surgeon alive could probe a wound more tenderly, or with less pain to the sufferer,—and the skill of that large hand was accompanied by the penetrative quality of the large benevolent brain which guided it,—a brain that could encompass the whole circle of the world in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... this toil of clay Already freed, with eager joy who hail'd The mirror of eternal truth unveil'd, Mid light effulgent and celestial day:— I, more than cherub, whose unfetter'd soul With penetrative glance aspir'd to flow Through nature's veins, and, still creating, know The life of gods,—how am I punish'd now! One thunder-word hath ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... guard of native-born Americans who have achieved success in some one field of musical endeavor, while a constantly increasing public, intent upon musical culture, finds in his letters and essays an expression of the deeper meaning of music and penetrative interpretations of the modern orchestra. Lanier influenced to some extent the minor poets of his era: who knows but that in some era of creative art — which let us hope is not far off — his subtle investigations and experiments in ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... the teaching of this "old Man eloquent" will long remain a subject of debate, but no one can rise from his works without recognising a moral grandeur in him that far out-tops the very human flaws that may even serve to make him more penetrative ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge

... later books the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too hard and bare in statement. We ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... are set free, which differ greatly from those described by Lenard as cathode rays The most marked difference between the two is the fact that Roentgen rays are not deflected by a magnet, indicating a very essential difference, while their range and penetrative power are incomparably greater. In fact, all those qualities which have lent a sensational character to the discovery of Roentgen's rays were mainly absent from these of Lenard, to the end that, although Roentgen has not been working in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... window'd in great Rome and see Thy master thus with pleach'd arms, bending down His corrigible neck, his face subdu'd To penetrative shame; whilst the wheel'd seat Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... gone from the choice, the consecration, of his boyhood. If he could but be rid of that altogether! Or if that would but speak with irresistible decision and effect! Was there perhaps somewhere, in some penetrative mind in this age of novelties, some scheme of truth, some science about men and things, which might harmonise for him his earlier and later preference, "the sacred and the profane loves," or, failing that, establish, to his pacification, the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... course, only mere surmises, but Liszt, although often wrong as to incidents, is, thanks to his penetrative genius, generally right as to essences. Indeed, if George Sand's surroundings and Chopin's character and tastes are kept in view nothing seems to be more probable than that his over-delicate susceptibilities may have occasionally ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... a good proof of their penetrative force, the influence on the new Stirling, who writes "The Secret of Hegel." He is quite as much a student of Carlyle to learn treatment, as of Hegel for his matter, and plays the same game on his essence-dividing German, which he has learned of you on Friedrich. I have read a ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Mr. Edwardes I stood in the front quadrangle and whistled. My whistle is unmusical and penetrative, useful only when a dog has been lost, and some man, whom I did not know, put his head out of his window and said abruptly, "For heaven's sake shut up that vile noise;" another man chucked a penny into the quad and told me he should send something ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... fact, she had discovered that neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous, and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... of this volume will give the reader a more correct idea of the character discussed than he would probably get from reading their biographies. The lecture is analytical, penetrative, terse, incisive, and candid. The book is worth its price, and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... they were talking, Moses looked up and saw Mara's head, as a stray sunbeam falling upon the golden hair seemed to make a halo around her face. Her large eyes were fixed upon him with an expression so intense and penetrative, that he felt a sort of wincing uneasiness. "What makes you look at me so, Mara?" he ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... are the young gentleman Mr. Roger Morton recommends?" Here Mr. Plaskwith took out a huge pocketbook, slowly unclasped it, staring hard at Philip, with what he designed for a piercing and penetrative survey. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of activity that need the presence and kindly penetrative interest of the educated ones of the race. The slums call for this influence. The growing problems in our northern cities especially call for work at the hands of the intelligent, scholarly men and women. Vice must be checked in the race, and a transformation be ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough

... things of modern habit and creation; I have listened to his luminous interpretations of the changed conditions which he saw about him; I have noted his unconcern toward the merely material advances of society, his penetrative insight into its intellectual and moral developments. A mind so capacious and open, a nature so trained and poised, could not be otherwise than self-contained and calm even in the presence of changes so vast and manifold as those which have transformed society since the days ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the perfections of intellectual beauty and aesthetic delight. But the palace of art, made the palace of the soul, becomes its dungeon-house, self-generating and filling fast with all loathsome and deathly shapes; and the heaven of intellectual joy becomes at last a more penetrative and intenser hell. The "Idylls of the King" are but exquisite variations on the one note—that the only true and high life of humanity is the life of full and free obedience; and that such life on earth becomes of necessity one of struggle, sorrow, outward loss and apparent failure. In "Vivien"—the ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... what had happened. There was a loneliness in the very air, as there had been when Uncle Leverett died. The sky was overcast, not exactly promising a storm, but soft and penetrative, as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... and intellectual growth were symmetrical. Her mind was quick, penetrative, and in constant exercise. Truthful and upright, her soul shone through her form and features, as a clear flame, placed within a transparent vase, brings out the adornments of flower, leaf, and gem, with which it ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... momentary intrusion of either the clown or the caricaturist, but even from the presence of "comic properties" (as actors would call them) of any kind: scenes of which the external setting is of the simplest possible character, while the humour is of that deepest and most penetrative kind which springs from the eternal incongruities of human nature, the ever-recurring ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... of the seer, the poet, the spiritualist, of all such as have an eye for the deeper essences and first principles of things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... guns intermediate between case-shot and solid shot, having much of the destructive spread of the former with somewhat of the range and penetrative force of the latter. A round of grapeshot consists of three tiers of cast-iron balls arranged, generally three in a tier, between four parallel iron discs connected together by a central wrought-iron pin. For carronades, the grape, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... attitudes of body that it was susceptible of being viewed in; kissing me in every part, the most secret and critical one so far from excepted that it received most of that branch of homage. Then his touches were so exquisitely wanton, so luxuriously diffused and penetrative at times, that he had made me perfectly rage with titillating fires, when, after all, and much ado, he had gained a short-lived erection, he would perhaps melt it away in a washy sweat, or a premature abortive effusion, that provokingly mocked my ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland



Words linked to "Penetrative" :   penetrating, penetrate, perceptive



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