Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Clearly expressed or presented; easy to understand.
  • adjective Expressing oneself clearly and effectively.
  • adjective Discerning; perspicacious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Capable of being seen through; transparent; translucent.
  • Obvious; plainly to be seen; conspicuous; evident.
  • Clear to the understanding; that may be easily apprehended or clearly understood; not obscure or ambiguous; lucid: as, a perspicuous statement.
  • Synonyms See perspicuity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Capable of being through; transparent; translucent; not opaque.
  • adjective Clear to the understanding; capable of being clearly understood; clear in thought or in expression; not obscure or ambiguous

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Clearly expressed, easy to understand; lucid.
  • adjective logic Of a language or notation, such as that of formal propositional calculus: where the process of inference from premises to conclusion is explicitly laid out.
  • adjective rare Transparent; translucent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (of language) transparently clear; easily understandable

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin perspicuus, from perspicere, to see through; see perspicacious.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin perspicuus, in turn from perspiciō ("see through").

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Examples

  • Similarly, to some numerical and geometrical functions, that can be described and grasped easily, the combinators that are frequently encountered can be characterized as perspicuous transformations on terms.

    Combinatory Logic Bimbó, Katalin 2008

  • Proofs should be "perspicuous," that is, the structure and flow of the proof's ideas should be graspable in large measure, and the over-arching ideas should be strung together with a series of lemmas to make the proof easy to follow in broad and detailed examination.

    The Strange Case of Richard Sternberg and His Apologists Mumon 2005

  • The doctrine can, of course, expand even further to become a general principle of effective rhetoric or even of scientific language, where it appears under the rubric of clear, "perspicuous" representation, modeled on perspectival, rationally constructed imagery.

    Notes, Mitchell, "Ekphrasis and the Other" 1997

  • The dialect of the Koreish was usually called the clear or "perspicuous" Arabic, but the Hamaritic dialect approached nearer to the purity of the mother Syriac.

    She Henry Rider Haggard 1890

  • "Review of Erasmus 'Preface" Luther answers Erasmus 'charge that the bible is not plain or "perspicuous" (hence the need to obey and submit to the authoritative interpretation of the Church)

    Stand Firm 2009

  • It is often stated that Scripture is "perspicuous" (clear) and able to be understood in the main by the committed, regenerate layman, and that by comparing Bible passage with Bible passage, the truth can always be found.

    Biblical Evidence for Catholicism 2009

  • The text was arranged in a perspicuous manner with clear divisions between chapters, items, and italicised rubrics.

    First Two Volumes of "Monumenta Ritualia Hungarica" Released 2009

  • There has come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book - wherewith Allah (God) guides all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leads them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light - guiding them to a path that is straight.

    Asad Khan: Spiritual Awakening & the Future of Our World Asad Khan 2011

  • There has come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book - wherewith Allah (God) guides all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leads them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light - guiding them to a path that is straight.

    Asad Khan: Spiritual Awakening & the Future of Our World Asad Khan 2011

  • But, somehow, for Obamalogists like DTM, all the overt quid pro quos won by the parasites IN “backroom deals” are betrayed by the expertly constructed rhetoric which reveal only to the most perspicuous reader of official texts, the super-coy machinations of O which will deliver HCR that is good HCR behind the backs of very powerful patrons who oppose HCR.

    Matthew Yglesias » Setback for Public Option Revival as Rockefeller Says No 2010

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