Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use penetrate in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Penetrate means to enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce. Example: “Light penetrates darkness.”

Examples of penetrate by meaning

verbTo enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.

  • Light penetrates darkness.
  • The native-born and the "naturalised" locomotives have been giving way to the standardised types, of which the L.M.S.R. class "5" 4-6-0 has led the way and has penetrated the furthest.1958 July, J. P. Wilson, “Scottish Soliloquy”, in Railway Magazine, page 495
  • Our results also identified the causative mutation of polydactylous Silkie was not exist in other nonpolydactyly chickens, suggesting that SNP of polydactyly in Silkie has fully penetrated all other indigenous Chinese chicken breeds.2016 February 10, “Parallel Evolution of Polydactyly Traits in Chinese and European Chickens”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI

verbTo achieve understanding of, despite some obstacle; to comprehend; to understand.

  • I could not penetrate Burke's opaque rhetoric.

verbTo affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to move deeply.

  • to penetrate one's heart with pity

verbTo insert the penis into an orifice, such as a vagina, mouth, or anus.

  • a male elephant comes up and penetrates the female
  • His weapons have been destroyed; his body has been or can be penetrated.2005, Patricia Vettel-Becker, Shooting from the hip: photography, masculinity, and postwar America

More sentences with penetrate

  • The evil aliens' death rays could not penetrate our mighty force fields!From the entry death ray
  • As we penetrated further, the forest closed around us.From the entry close
  • There's only so much density that pedagogy can penetrate.From the entry density
  • Due to the thin layer of snow on the ground the frost line has penetrated unusually deep this year.From the entry frost line
  • A fiery streak penetrates your skull, trying to force your eyes open.2019 October 15, ZA/UM, Robert Kurvitz, quoting Limbic System, Disco Elysium, →OCLC. From the entry fiery
  • They penetrated even the bozone layer of the Canadian Government, and the policy was temporarily withdrawn.2015, Elaine Coburn, edited by Emma LaRocque, More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence, Fernwood…. From the entry bozone layer
  • Ordinary punjis will penetrate thick uniforms or the upper part of a shoe.2013, Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Allied Sabotage Devices and Booby Traps, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 19. From the entry punji
  • These voices compete, interanimate (penetrate and inform), and change over time.1996, Jennifer L. Troutner, Language, Culture, and Politics: English in China, 1840s-1990s, page 45. From the entry interanimate
  • The Chinese virus has completely penetrated the fabric of the Hosaka.1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer, page 231. From the entry Chinese virus
  • According to S.S., they penetrated over 10 km into Vietnam in that attack.1984, Michael Vickery, Cambodia, 1975-1982, Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, →ISBN, page 190. From the entry Kampuchea Krom
  • My flak jacket was so full of Tampax that nothing could have penetrated it.1983, Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There, Berkley Books, →OCLC, page 140. From the entry tough titties
  • Films and radio have penetrated to the waybacks of New Zealand and to the Pacific Islands.1968, Ralph Herbert Brookes, Ian Hugh Kawharu, Administration in New Zealand's Multi-racial Society - Issue 13, page 76. From the entry wayback
  • A feather edge of the unit has also been penetrated in Union-Kern-A.O.G.1965, Australia. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, U-K-A. Wandoan No. 1, Queensland of Union Oil Development…. From the entry Wandoan
  • In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, the ever-renewed Oriental sap penetrated also into the song.1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 183. From the entry sap
  • I expect to have an interesting time and penetrate into queerish places.1924, Edward Morgan Forster, A Passage to India. From the entry queerish
  • At high altitudes, cosmic rays—high-energy particles from the Sun and distant space—can penetrate aircraft and strike sensitive parts of computer chips.2025 December 6, “What is the Airbus ‘Icarus Bug’ and how are airlines fixing it? It involves a rare failure in a flight-control computer…. From the entry SEU
  • A guy gets penetrated, even though he asks for it, well that spurred all kinds of anxious and titillated homocurious responses.2019, Laurie Stone, “Was It Good for You?”, in The Women's Review of Books, volume 36, number 2, Wellesley, M.A.: Wellesley College…. From the entry homocurious
  • At the contact to sediment infillings, fungi produced haustoria that penetrated and scavenged on the remains of fragmented marine organisms.2015 July 17, “Zygomycetes in Vesicular Basanites from Vesteris Seamount, Greenland Basin – A New Type of Cryptoendolithic Fungi”, in PLOS…. From the entry infillings
  • Intrinsic characteristics of aptamers make them easy to incorporate into biocarriers to penetrate the BBB and improve target delivery.2015 October 17, “Inhibition of BACE1 Activity by a DNA Aptamer in an Alzheimer’s Disease Cell Model”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry biocarriers
  • In fact all the competing theories have developed their own specialized jargons and have a tendency to be difficult to penetrate.2014, Ian Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today. From the entry jargon
  • However, his fantasy is to double penetrate her.2014, J.A. Landry., Eaves Drop. From the entry double penetrate
  • But the rest of her body shivered, mandacaru cactus thorns penetrated the flesh that had been half-eaten away by the disease.2006, Graciliano Ramos, “Whale”, in K. David Jackson, editor, The Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story, page 214. From the entry mandacaru
  • So in five cases, due to improper seatment of pins in distal fragment, pins penetrated towards patellar region damaging articular cartilage.2005, Indian Journal of Veterinary Surgery - Volumes 26-29, page 122. From the entry seatment
  • Pale yellowish brown silty clay penetrated by abundant crotovine.2005 December, Zoltán Horváth, Erika Michéli, Andrea Mindszenty, Judit Berényi-Üveges, “Soft-sediment deformation structures in Late…. From the entry crotovine
  • What is it that penetrates, that permeates, that contradicts even itself, a life not life, an unevil evil, a familiar romance?2005, Willard Spiegelman, How Poets See the World, page 165. From the entry unevil
  • She put her thin hand to her cheek like a lady writer in a photograph with eyes that could penetrate surfaces.2001, Finola Moorhead, Darkness More Visible. From the entry away with the fairies
  • The meaning of the words finally penetrated.2001, Eric Flint, “Carthago Delenda Est”, in Foreign Legions, Riverdale, N.Y.: Baen Books, →ISBN, page 253. From the entry galactic
  • Obviously, this was done not for the sake of stake itself: the strategic aim was to penetrate the Heartland.2000, Farhad Tolipov, “Geopolitical Stalemate in Afghanistan”, in Central Asia and the Caucasus. From the entry tellurocracy
  • "Project MKULTRA” was the govemment's secret attempt to penetrate the occult interior of psychotropism—it appears to have failed miserably.1999, Journal of Cognitive Liberties - Volume 1, page 37. From the entry psychotropism
  • It is penetrated by the rolling sand from Inner Mongolia.[1964, Yu-ti (任育地) Jen, 中国地理概述 [A Concise Geography of China], Peking: Foreign Languages Press, →OCLC, page 195. From the entry Beishan
  • The ascendancy of the offensive over the defensive stems particularly from the ability of advanced weapon systems to penetrate enemy defenses.1959, Air University Quarterly Review, Volumes 11-12, U.S. Army Air Forces, page 44. From the entry omnidirectional
  • After five minutes' conversation with me the old folks would penetrate the deception like a dose of salts.1949, P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season. From the entry like a dose of salts
  • I saw a whole ringful of black clouds and this little ray of sunshine just couldn't penetrate them.1949, John Harold Johnson, Negro Digest - Volume 8, page 12. From the entry ringful

Meaning of penetrate

  1. verb To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.
  2. verb To achieve understanding of, despite some obstacle; to comprehend; to understand.
  3. verb To affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to move deeply.

Full definition of penetrate

Questions about penetrate in a sentence

How do you use penetrate in a sentence?
Penetrate is used as a verb. For example: “Light penetrates darkness.”
What is a short sentence with penetrate?
“Light penetrates darkness.”
What does penetrate mean?
Penetrate means to enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: penetrate (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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