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Percipient vs Perspicacious - What's the difference?

percipient | perspicacious |

As adjectives the difference between percipient and perspicacious

is that percipient is having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly while perspicacious is of acute discernment; having keen insight; mentally perceptive.

As a noun percipient

is one who perceives something.

percipient

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.
  • (psychology, education, dated) Perceiving events only in the moment, without reflection, as a very young child.
  • Over time children advance from the percipient stage to the perceptive stage, in which they begin to reflect on the significance of events.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (philosophy, psychology) One who perceives something.
  • * 1954 : , Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953 , dilemma vii: Perception, page 99 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)
  • As anatomy, physiology and, later, psychology have developed into more or less well-organized sciences, they have necessarily and rightly come to incorporate the study of, among other things, the structures, mechanisms, and functionings of animal and human bodies qua percipient .
  • (parapsychology) One who has perceived a paranormal event.
  • In the course of investigating the haunting, I interviewed several percipients .

    perspicacious

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (figuratively) Of acute discernment; having keen insight; mentally perceptive.
  • (obsolete) Able to physically see clearly; quick-sighted; sharp-sighted.
  • Derived terms

    * perspicaciously * perspicaciousness

    See also

    * clairvoyant * conspicuous * perspective