Protrude vs Penetrate - What's the difference?
protrude | penetrate |
To extend from, above or beyond a surface or boundary; to bulge outward; to stick out.
*
To thrust forward; to drive or force along.
To thrust out, as through a narrow orifice or from confinement; to cause to come forth.
* Thomson
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)
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)- 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 .
- (John Locke)
- When Spring protrudes the bursting gems.
Derived terms
* protrudable * protrudent * protrusible * protrusionpenetrate
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)