Verb

(en verb)

To detect with the senses, especially with the eyes.

* {{quote-book

, year=1875 , author=Jules Verne , title=The Survivors of the Chancellor , chapter=1 citation , passage=Meanwhile the brig had altered her tack, and was moving slowly to the east. Three hours later and the keenest eye could not have discerned her top-sails above the horizon.}}

To perceive, recognize, or comprehend with the mind; to descry.

* {{quote-book

, year=1842 , author=Charles Dickens , title=American Notes for General Circulation citation , passage=If they discern' any evidences of wrong-going in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they ' discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken.}}

To distinguish something as being different from something else; to differentiate.

* {{quote-book

, year=1651 , author=Thomas Hobbes , title=Leviathan citation , passage=The severity of judgement, they say, makes men censorious and unapt to pardon the errors and infirmities of other men: and on the other side, celerity of fancy makes the thoughts less steady than is necessary to discern exactly between right and wrong.}}

He was too young to discern right from wrong.

To perceive differences.

Verb

(penetrat)

To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.

Light penetrates darkness.

* {{quote-book, year=1879, title=The Telephone, the Microphone and the Phonograph

, author=Th Du Moncel, page=166, publisher=Harper , passage=He takes the prepared charcoal used by artists, brings it to a white heat, and suddenly plunges it in a bath of mercury, of which the globules instantly penetrate the pores of charcoal, and may be said to metallize it.}}

(figuratively) To achieve understanding of, despite some obstacle; to comprehend; to understand.

I could not penetrate Burke's opaque rhetoric.

* Ray

things which here were too subtile for us to penetrate

To affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to move deeply.

to penetrate one's heart with pity

* M. Arnold

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

(Shakespeare)

To infiltrate an enemy to gather intelligence.

To insert the penis into an opening, such as a vagina or anus. (rfex)