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Absorbent vs Penetrable - What's the difference?

absorbent | penetrable | Related terms |

As adjectives the difference between absorbent and penetrable

is that absorbent is having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive while penetrable is capable of being penetrated, entered, or pierced.

As a noun absorbent

is anything which absorbs.

absorbent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive.
    • Those paper towels were amazingly absorbent . That was quite a spill.

    Derived terms

    * absorbent ground * nonabsorbent

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anything which absorbs.
  • * 1839 , , 1972, Forgotten Books, page 225,
    • In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year is low.
  • (physiology, pluralized, now, rare) The vessels by which the processes of absorption are carried on, as the lymphatics in animals, the extremities of the roots in plants.
  • (medicine) Any substance which absorbs and neutralizes acid fluid in the stomach and bowels, as magnesia, chalk, etc.; also a substance, e.g., iodine, which acts on the absorbent vessels so as to reduce enlarged and indurated parts.
  • (chemistry) A liquid used in the process of separating gases or volatile liquids, in oil refining.

    • References

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    penetrable

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Capable of being penetrated, entered, or pierced.
  • * 1867 : , The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World
    • On the east the high mountain-chain of Zagros, penetrable only in one or two places, forms a barrier of the most marked character, and is beyond a doubt the natural limit for which we are looking.
  • * 1900 : Arthur M. Mann, The Boer in Peace and War
    • A Boer may know you, but it will take you some time to know him, and when a certain stage in your acquaintance is reached, you may begin to wonder whether his real nature is penetrable at all.
  • * 1996 : Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith, Theories of Theories of Mind
    • A capacity is cognitively penetrable in this sense if that capacity is affected by the subject's knowledge or ignorance of the domain.

    Antonyms

    * impenetrable

    Related terms

    * penetrableness * penetrably

    References

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