Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use imperceptible in a sentence

16 example sentences · adjective, noun

Imperceptible means not perceptible, not detectable, too small in magnitude to be observed. Example: “We all missed the imperceptible shake of his head as he tried to warn us without being seen.”

Examples of imperceptible by meaning

adjectiveNot perceptible, not detectable, too small in magnitude to be observed.

  • We all missed the imperceptible shake of his head as he tried to warn us without being seen.
  • To my unpractised eye, the undulations in the track were quite imperceptible, but the engineer's hand on the throttle was never still.1961 July, J. Geoffrey Todd, “Impressions of railroading in the United States: Part Two”, in Trains Illustrated, page 425
  • Very small benefits may be imperceptible.1986, Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, page 75

nounSomething that is imperceptible.

  • What made it meaningful were not the facts or details, but the imperceptibles.2016, Noah Hawley, “Gil Baruch: June 5, 1967–August 26, 2015”, in Before the Fall, London: Hodder, published 2017, →ISBN, page 250

More sentences with imperceptible

  • The recruit's face was smooth but for a single almost imperceptible hair protruding from his chin. "Unshaven!" screamed the officer.From the entry unshaven
  • Charlie Dabney subsided into an imperceptible chair, and somersaulted in the direction of the gulley-trap.1963, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow, Text Classics, published 2012, page 172. From the entry gully trap
  • Whether by means large or small, noticed or almost imperceptible, poetry's startlements displace the existing self with a changed one.2015, Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. From the entry startlement
  • The light on the hill may be dim, imperceptible.2011, Y. Varoufakis, J. Halevi, N. Theocarakis, Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, Routledge. From the entry trapezocracy
  • "You should make the hops almost imperceptible," he says.1998, The New Brewer, volume 15, page 66. From the entry festbier
  • Their odour is stale or imperceptible; never fæcaloid.1918, H. Vincent, L. Muratet, Medical and Surgical Therapy, D. Appleton & Company, volume I, § II, page 379. From the entry fæcaloid
  • They remained close against the sides, or, if they moved at all, it was imperceptible to my eyes (which, by the way, are non-pareils).1901, Edmund Selous, Bird Watching, p. 240. From the entry nonpareil
  • This pill's persuasiveness lies in its ability to exponentialize the psychic pain of your neurodivergence over the almost imperceptible, side-effect nuisances of uncontrollable drooling or increased appetite.2017, Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. From the entry exponentialize
  • One result of overtranslation is to render this development incoherent, trivial, or even imperceptible, since the development is already tacitly built into the translation from the beginning.2000, Hans Georg Gadamer, Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer's Hermeneutics, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 73. From the entry overtranslation
  • With an almost imperceptible touch, the narrator connects up this oneirism of names with the premonitory signs of the vocation that Remebrance is said to recount.1990, Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative, volume 2, page 138. From the entry oneirism
  • The innumerable gradations of malplacements from the almost imperceptible slip to the complete dislocation, the numerous possible curvatures and the various arthritic effects comprise a tremendous field.1913, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, page 337. From the entry malplacement
  • A grey decaying door like Elizabethana in the dis-United Kingdom pushed open to a stylised summary of the world: the imperceptible fall of Now as fountain, strange nostalgia for paradise.1995, Chris Bendon, “Arabia?”, in Jewry: A Poetry Collection (Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Poetic Drama and Poetic Theory…. From the entry Elizabethana

Meaning of imperceptible

  1. adjective Not perceptible, not detectable, too small in magnitude to be observed.
  2. adjective Beyond the purview of man; too great and all-encompassing to be perceived.
  3. noun Something that is imperceptible.

Full definition of imperceptible

Questions about imperceptible in a sentence

How do you use imperceptible in a sentence?
Imperceptible is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “We all missed the imperceptible shake of his head as he tried to warn us without being seen.”
What is a short sentence with imperceptible?
“Very small benefits may be imperceptible.”
What does imperceptible mean?
Imperceptible means not perceptible, not detectable, too small in magnitude to be observed.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: imperceptible (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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