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penetrating
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
penetrating
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
penetrating cold
▪ a penetrating question
▪ a penetrating sealer for wood
▪ a penetrating whistle
▪ The book offers some penetrating insights into how government works.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Fish do not find worms that look like that and hooks lose so much of their penetrating power.
▪ He spoke in a penetrating voice that made all the other customers look on with interest.
▪ He then answered the many penetrating questions put to him.
▪ The closed clubface at impact reduces loft and results in a penetrating shot through the wind.
▪ This differs radically from the popular image of penetrating falsehood by perception of the liar.
▪ Trying by cupping his hand over the clasps to avoid the penetrating clicks of opening, George lifted the lid.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Penetrating

Penetrate \Pen"e*trate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Penetrated; p. pr. & vb. n. Penetrating.] [L. penetratus, p. p. of penetrare to penetrate; akin to penitus inward, inwardly, and perh. to pens with, in the power of, penus store of food, innermost part of a temple.]

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

  2. 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.
    --Shak.

    The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style.
    --M. Arnold.

  3. 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.
    --Ray.

Penetrating

Penetrating \Pen"e*tra`ting\, a.

  1. Having the power of entering, piercing, or pervading; sharp; subtile; penetrative; as, a penetrating odor.

  2. Acute; discerning; sagacious; quick to discover; as, a penetrating mind.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
penetrating

"touching the feelings intensely," 1630s, figurative present participle adjective from penetrate (v.).

Wiktionary
penetrating
  1. 1 able to pierce or penetrate 2 demonstrating acute or keen understanding v

  2. (present participle of penetrate English)

WordNet
penetrating
  1. adj. having or demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions; "an acute observer of politics and politicians"; "incisive comments"; "icy knifelike reasoning"; "as sharp and incisive as the stroke of a fang"; "penetrating insight"; "frequent penetrative observations" [syn: acute, discriminating, incisive, keen, knifelike, penetrative, piercing, sharp]

  2. tending to penetrate; having the power of entering or piercing; "a toxic penetrative spray applied to the surface"; "a cold penetrating wind"; "a penetrating odor" [syn: penetrative]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "penetrating".

In this amazing blackness, which only the acetylene torch seemed capable of penetrating, they could make a swift escape.

I want to take a moment here to respond to the other common concern voiced by my female patients over the years: Second only to cleanliness, many women are resistant to the thought of penetrating their partners due to an odd societal stigma that equates anal stimulation with homosexuality and, hence, emasculation.

They also found they could weld a short length of DNA on to a bacteriophage, which is a minute organism capable of penetrating the wall of a cell.

Gamesmen of Barish while she asked sensible, penetrating questions in a manner which reminded me much of Himaggery on his better days.

The heady fluid played beguiling tricks as the air cooled and dried it, leaving a hot, penetrating residue that saturated deeply into her fluttery senses.

His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences.

In fact, all through the ages man has been imitating the animals in burrowing through the earth, penetrating the waters, and now, at last, flying through the air.

A horrid memory of Mastrovin came to his mind, the face which had glowered on him in the room in the Portaway Hydropathic, the face which he had seen distorted with fury in the library of Castle Gay--the heavy shaven chin, the lowering brows, the small penetrating eyes--the face which Red Davie had described as that of a maker of revolutions.

Large sections of skin eaten away, serious damage to the internal organs from the penetrating hyphae, and so on.

She, and her Talent, had matured at fourteen, and since then Sascha had been struggling to teach her the necessary discipline that any Talent had to master, and that she would certainly require before her penetrating mental shout could be utilized.

A penetrating study of the metapsychology of tabooing and the meanings of the unsaid in Dostoevsky.

The reduced muzzle velocity was causing the shells to explode before penetrating the RAF airframes, and the cannon shells were fragmenting into such small pieces that the monocoque structures were often being perforated but not always shattered.

The extensive, various learning, massive, penetrating mind, and remorseless logical consistency, of Augustine, enabled him to gather up the loose, floating theological elements and notions of the time, and generalize them into a complete system, in striking harmony, indeed, with the general character and drift of patristic thought, but carried out more fully in its details and applied more unflinchingly in its principles than had been done before, and therefore in some of its dogmas outstripping the current convictions of his contemporaries.

It is believed that the spout of the oil-can must have passed under the zygoma to the base of the skull, perforating the great wing of the spheroid bone and penetrating the centrum ovale, injuring the anterior fibers of the motor tract in the internal capsule near the genu.

Normann claims that penetrating arrays require less electricity and will allow individual neurons to be stimulated, and could result in smaller and more closely focused phosphenes, creating an image with higher resolution.