Definitions

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

  • adjective Having the power of perceiving, especially perceiving keenly and readily.
  • noun One that perceives.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Perceiving; having the faculty of perception.
  • noun One who or that which perceives, or has the faculty of perception.
  • noun Specifically, one to whom the unexpressed thoughts of another (called the agent) are sought to be transferred in conducting telepathic experiments.

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

  • adjective Having the faculty of perception; perceiving.

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

  • adjective Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.
  • adjective psychology, education, dated Perceiving events only in the moment, without reflection, as a very young child.
  • noun philosophy, psychology One who perceives something.
  • noun parapsychology One who has perceived a paranormal event.

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

  • adjective characterized by ease and quickness in perceiving
  • noun a person who becomes aware (of things or events) through the senses

Etymologies

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

[Latin percipiēns, percipient-, present participle of percipere, to perceive; see perceive.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin percipient-, root of percipiens, present participle of percipio ("to perceive")

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Examples

  • The percipient is usually a nasty divorce or child-custody battle.

    ‘Better-Off Dead’ 2009

  • This is the meaning of calling the percipient event our standpoint for perception.

    The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 Alfred North Whitehead 1904

  • (inaudible), and the percipient is a high-pressure flame issuing from

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 Various

  • The percipient who settles for contemplation is unable to experience art in quite this active way, but neither is the one driven by the sheer desire for beauty, who is willing to sacrifice the particularity of the work for the abstractly sensual, nor the "investigator," who, in his/her preference for "data" or illustration can only be impatient with the "uniqueness of the object perceived."

    John Dewey's *Art as Experience* 2010

  • There is work to be done on the part of the percipient, as there is on the part of the artist.

    Re-creation and How to Appreciate Art and Literature 2009

  • The percipient who settles for contemplation is unable to experience art in quite this active way, but neither is the one driven by the sheer desire for beauty, who is willing to sacrifice the particularity of the work for the abstractly sensual, nor the "investigator," who, in his/her preference for "data" or illustration can only be impatient with the "uniqueness of the object perceived."

    The Reading Experience 2010

  • There is work to be done on the part of the percipient, as there is on the part of the artist.

    2009 February 25 | NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS 2009

  • The percipient who settles for contemplation is unable to experience art in quite this active way, but neither is the one driven by the sheer desire for beauty, who is willing to sacrifice the particularity of the work for the abstractly sensual, nor the "investigator," who, in his/her preference for "data" or illustration can only be impatient with the "uniqueness of the object perceived."

    Subject-Matter 2010

  • The percipient who settles for contemplation is unable to experience art in quite this active way, but neither is the one driven by the sheer desire for beauty, who is willing to sacrifice the particularity of the work for the abstractly sensual, nor the "investigator," who, in his/her preference for "data" or illustration can only be impatient with the "uniqueness of the object perceived."

    March 2010 2010

  • Signed "Emendator," its claim that the most dangerous errors "are those which make a kind of half sense," is both perceptive and percipient.

    It's The Inaccuracy, Stupid 2010

Comments

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  • "...although he was wary, percipient, and acute enough to have survived several campaigns in which many of his colleagues had died, some under torture, he was by no means omniscient..."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 34–35

    February 19, 2008

  • Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.

    August 1, 2021

  • Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.

    October 25, 2021