Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having the power of perceiving, especially perceiving keenly and readily.
- n. One that perceives.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Perceiving; having the faculty of perception.
- n. One who or that which perceives, or has the faculty of perception.
- n. Specifically, one to whom the unexpressed thoughts of another (called the agent) are sought to be transferred in conducting telepathic experiments.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.
- adj. psychology, education, dated Perceiving events only in the moment, without reflection, as a very young child.
- n. philosophy, psychology One who perceives something.
- n. parapsychology One who has perceived a paranormal event.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having the faculty of perception; perceiving.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characterized by ease and quickness in perceiving
- n. a person who becomes aware (of things or events) through the senses
Etymologies
- From Latin percipient-, root of percipiens, present participle of percipio ("to perceive") (Wiktionary)
- Latin percipiēns, percipient-, present participle of percipere, to perceive; see perceive. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The percipient is usually a nasty divorce or child-custody battle.”
“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
“(inaudible), and the percipient is a high-pressure flame issuing from”
“There is work to be done on the part of the percipient, as there is on the part of the artist.”
“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.”
“Signed "Emendator," its claim that the most dangerous errors "are those which make a kind of half sense," is both perceptive and percipient.”
“Paul, the oracle octopus whose prescient premonitions perfectly predicted the outcome of all six German World Cup games, first generated anger from Argentinian fans who believe his percipient pick doomed Argentina in the quarterfinals.”
“Surely, he is percipient enough to grasp how this compromise was going to play out with his base.”
The Huffington Post: Gordon Marino: President Obama: The Courage not to Fight
“The riddle of solipsistic perception prompted Bertrand Russell to explain, Perception is marvelous, because it cannot be conceived as an action of the object on the percipient, since substances never interact.”
“A few percipient souls recognised sooner than the rest of us that the great economic miracle of which Blair and Gordon Brown once boasted was really an asset-and-credit bubble which one day must burst.”
The Guardian: My generation squandered our golden opportunity | Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘percipient’.
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New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 241 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pustule, purulence, pushful, purser, purpureal, putative, purpure, purpresture, purloin, purline, purlieu, purlicue and 1766 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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difficult words
ordure, tatterwallop, callipygian, odious, colophon, cynosure, hardener, emollience, valetudinarian, demonym, volage, polysemantic and 260 more...
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Verba Dilecta
delectable, notate, pauciloquy, paucity, pauciloquent, paucify, interscapilium, uropygium, inferna, nota, equipollent, prepollent and 677 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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My Revised GRE Preparation List
Words from the new GRE : This list consists mostly of words from the book Magoosh-GRE-vocab-ebook, which is one of the best vocab materials available, especially if you have started preparing one ...
mulct, dupe, pittance, stipend, defray, cupidity, avarice, prodigal, profligate, affluent, insolvent, penurious and 533 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Test-words
rarefy, occlude, bolt, lambaste, career, careen, largesse, enormity, neologism, quizzical, sibyl, euphony and 105 more...
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Hodges English 10 Vocab
All the vocab will get in class over the year.
aberration, acrimony, adduce, anthropomorphous, caitiff, chagrin, clement, connote, deluge, deride, dissemble, edify and 213 more...
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random
words I read but don't know
nascent, proxy, desultory, charlatan, churlish, emaciated, gaudy, shill, lurid, frisson, marauding, plunder and 610 more...
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wordsmithing part deux
because wordsmith is not a verb.
enmity, incarnate, chignon, nape, solitude, nocturne, decorum, warren, svelte, interstice, serene, charlotte and 488 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for percipient.
chained_bear "...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 Feb 19, 2008