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Penetrative   Listen
adjective
Penetrative  adj.  
1.
Tending to penetrate; of a penetrating quality; piercing; as, the penetrative sun. "His look became keen and penetrative."
2.
Having the power to affect or impress the mind or heart; impressive; as, penetrative shame.
3.
Acute; discerning; sagacious; as, penetrative wisdom. "The penetrative eye." "Led on by skill of penetrative soul."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penetrative" Quotes from Famous Books



... whose penetrative wisdom found The South-Sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown'd, When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay, Thou stood'st; nor sent one bill unpaid away. When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's boards, And Atwill's self was ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... eloped her face, and the pleasantest conviction of a young life seemed to thrust itself upon her. She was forced to tell herself that his eyes never turned from her, until they had looked into hers with that deep penetrative glance that makes us feel that a soul is looking into another soul. His hand had never been drawn away from hers until she had detected that slight, almost unwilling pressure that has only one meaning. When the tongue will not be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time hauteur that ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... not as a shade—it was not as a memory, or not as the poor things that were called memory! But she came in the authority and integrity of herself, that was also, most dearly, most marvelously, himself as well—permeative, penetrative, real, a subtle breath named Elspeth! So subtle, so wide and deep, elastic, universal, with no horizons that he could see.... To and fro played ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... spring—looks rather above the heads of his fellow-passengers—but with a quick, easy turn of his own, which is lightly set on his shoulders; his mouth is a little open—his eye is bright, rather restless, but penetrative—his port has something of defiance—his form is erect, but without stiffness. Such was the appearance of the Baron's companion. And as Randal turned round at Levy's voice, the Baron said to his companion, "A young man in the first circles—you should book him for your fair ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... unintelligible bit of experience, till the majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos, poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence—though we do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacant region of a priori thought, but somehow from the interaction of both these elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slow labour of proof, the application ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones



Words linked to "Penetrative" :   keen, acute, penetrating, sharp, perceptive



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