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Penetrate vs Descry - What's the difference?

penetrate | descry | Related terms |

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)
  • 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)
  • Derived terms

    * penetration * penetrable

    descry

    English

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • To see.
  • To discover (a distant or obscure object) by the eye; to espy; to discern or detect.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Edmund, I think, is gone to descry / The strength o' the enemy.
  • * Milton
  • And now their way to earth they had descried .
  • * 1719 (Daniel Defoe), (Robinson Crusoe)
  • When I had passed the vale where my bower stood
  • *
  • , 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
  • His purple robe he had thrown aside, lest it should descry him.

    Anagrams

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