Penetrate vs Descry - What's the difference?
penetrate | descry | Related terms |
To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.
* {{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.
* Ray
To affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to move deeply.
* M. Arnold
To infiltrate an enemy to gather intelligence.
To insert the penis into an opening, such as a vagina or anus. (rfex)
To see.
To discover (a distant or obscure object) by the eye; to espy; to discern or detect.
* Shakespeare
* Milton
* 1719 (Daniel Defoe), (Robinson Crusoe)
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4
, passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}
To discover; to disclose; to reveal.
* Milton
Penetrate is a related term of descry.
As verbs the difference between penetrate and descry
is that penetrate is to enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce while descry is to see.penetrate
English
(Penetration)Verb
(penetrat)- Light penetrates darkness.
- I could not penetrate Burke's opaque rhetoric.
- things which here were too subtile for us to penetrate
- to penetrate one's heart with pity
- The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style.
- (Shakespeare)
Derived terms
* penetration * penetrableExternal links
* * * ----descry
English
Verb
(en-verb)- Edmund, I think, is gone to descry / The strength o' the enemy.
- And now their way to earth they had descried .
- When I had passed the vale where my bower stood
- His purple robe he had thrown aside, lest it should descry him.