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Protrude vs Penetrate - What's the difference?

protrude | penetrate |

As verbs the difference between protrude and penetrate

is that protrude is to extend from, above or beyond a surface or boundary; to bulge outward; to stick out while penetrate is to enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.

protrude

English

Verb

(protrud)
  • To extend from, above or beyond a surface or boundary; to bulge outward; to stick out.
  • *
  • Archegonia are surrounded early in their development by the juvenile perianth, through the slender beak of which the elongated neck of the fertilized archegonium protrudes .
  • To thrust forward; to drive or force along.
  • (John Locke)
  • To thrust out, as through a narrow orifice or from confinement; to cause to come forth.
  • * Thomson
  • When Spring protrudes the bursting gems.

    Derived terms

    * protrudable * protrudent * protrusible * protrusion

    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