Definitions

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

  • adjective Capable of being penetrated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Capable of being penetrated, entered, or pierced by another body.
  • Susceptible of moral or intellectual impression.
  • Penetrating.

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

  • adjective Capable of being penetrated, entered, or pierced. Used also figuratively.

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

  • adjective Capable of being penetrated, entered, or pierced.

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

  • adjective admitting of penetration or passage into or through
  • adjective capable of being penetrated

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Then a light emanated from the self-subsisting form by the order of God, the splendor of which spread upon the heaven, moving from point to point, and caused the material form (_i.e. _, the inferior, so-called penetrable form) to change its place.

    A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Isaac Husik 1907

  • The original book is very good too, and I think would be reasonably penetrable for someone who hadn't previously followed the Bernice Summerfield stories.

    November Books 14) Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen nwhyte 2009

  • Once inside, you stand in total darkness, never imagining it to be penetrable in any way.

    Peter Clothier: Phenomenal Peter Clothier 2012

  • Once inside, you stand in total darkness, never imagining it to be penetrable in any way.

    Peter Clothier: Phenomenal Peter Clothier 2012

  • It left me thinking that despite the haze the passing years had enveloped around the events of the war, the narrative was affirming thatthe haze was ultimately penetrable through determination and a little patience.

    The Reading Experience 2010

  • I, like Wolverine, am perfectly penetrable by bullets.

    Matthew Yglesias » Hello 2009

  • Freemasonry is the oldest of all, still the biggest, and—in the public mind—about as penetrable as the mythic crypt beneath the ninth vault of Solomon's Temple.

    Latest Freemason Conspiracy: Recruiting Younger Bros Barry Newman 2011

  • The Time Vampire requires detailed knowledge of Leela's story as seen on TV and then heard in The Catalyst, and is even then not very penetrable.

    June Books 14) The God Engines, by John Scalzi nwhyte 2010

  • At one point in the book you describe Central Asia as "Massive, sometimes flat, sometimes mountainous, sometimes terrifically hot, other times frigidly cold, plagued with thousands of miles of penetrable borders, lacking an identifiable geographic center, and home to citizens know figuratively and sometimes literally to cut the colonialist's throat… the death sentence of several empires which attempted to hold onto it."

    A Conversation with Tom Bissell 2010

  • I find the standard account pretty persuasive: Western homophobia is a form of disguised misogyny, rooted in male horror of feminization and the prospect of themselves as penetrable (and therefore potentially subordinate and depowered).

    The Look of Lust 2009

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