How to use perceive in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Perceive means to become aware of, through the physical senses, to see; to understand. Example: “By acuteness of feeling, we perceive small objects or slight impressions.”

Examples of perceive by meaning

verbTo become aware of, through the physical senses, to see; to understand.

He snatched up his King and swung it around wildly, finally perceiving that there was no square for the critter,1938 May, Fred Reinfeld, “The US Championship Tournament”, in Chess Review
Only after recognizing them individually can we begin to try to understand them, to struggle with perceiving what they mean.1972, Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 17

verbTo interpret something in a particular way.

John was perceived to be a coward by his comrades

More sentences with perceive

By acuteness of feeling, we perceive small objects or slight impressions.From the entry acuteness
One of the most common synaesthetic effects is to perceive each letter as having a colour.From the entry synaesthetic
Humans and birds can perceive color.From the entry color
Baby birds are known for a propensity to imprint; they tend to imprint on whichever creatures they perceive to be their parents — including humans doing wildlife rescue!From the entry imprint
More to the point: 20 years ago, I did not perceive a political dimension to parenting.2026 March 4, Leonard Sax, “Permissive parents skew left, strict ones right — US parenting has become political like never before”, in New…. From the entry permissive
Despite these positive strides, there has been backlash against what some perceive as the "wokification" of gaming.2024, Louisa Ben Saïd, Angad Singh Malik, The Gender Equality Quest in Video Games, page 68. From the entry wokification
Not any more burdened by modesty than you used to be, I perceive, young lady.2023, Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey, More About Peggy, page 27. From the entry burdened
My brain can perceive that signal and then cancel it out.2020 October 18, Masha Gessen, “Alexey Navalny Has the Proof of His Poisoning”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast…. From the entry go berserk
Whatever I may perceive or imagine, i.e. an external reference, must be reduced to autoreference.Oliver Jahraus, Autoreferentiality, Autoreflexivity, Selftransparency, in 2019, Self-reflection in Literature (page 20). From the entry autoreference
The individual level of perceiving and dealing with threats interacts with the collective level of the traumascape.2018, Dinesh Bhugra, Kamaldeep Bhui, Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry, page 382. From the entry traumascape
When they occur in children's books, adults tend to perceive them as off-putting.2018, Ralf Thiede, Children's Books, Brain Development, and Language Acquisition, Taylor & Francis. From the entry Amelia Bedelia
People behave differently when they perceive a thing to be scarce.2017, Rutger Bregman, chapter 3, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 56. From the entry impinge
Nevertheless, many humans intuitively perceive colostrum as “sour milk,” which should not be given to infants.2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 16, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN. From the entry colostrum
Because you are people, you personify what you perceive — “peopleize” it.2012, Jane Roberts, The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One: A Seth Book in Two Volumes. From the entry peopleize
The west perceives the Dali Lama as a deity, the 14th spiritual leader of Tibet.2011, Martin Wolff, China: Current Thinking of Tomorrow’s Leaders, page 161. From the entry Dali Lama
Generally the girls tend to perceive their social world as somewhat more plural than boys do.2009, Pille Valk, Teenagers' perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, ..., page 281. From the entry plural
Some people claim to perceive these figures through the creative imagination.2008, Victoria Kennick Urubshurow, “Approaching Religious Traditions”, in Introducing World Religions, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN…. From the entry hierophanic
Opiate receptors in human brains allow us to perceive pleasurable stimuli such as sweet tastes.2006, Jonathan Balcombe, Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good, →ISBN. From the entry pleasurable
In other words, sarcasm is absolute because the sarcast perceives “two versions of reality”.2006, María Isabel Kalbermatten, Verbal Irony as a Prototype Category in Spanish: A Discoursive Analysis. From the entry sarcast
I do not perceive there a frightened call to cuniculiform fecundity.2006, Théophile de Giraud, The Art of Guillotining Procreators: An Anti-Natalist Manifesto. From the entry cuniculiform
So in time Mother learned to perceive me through the mirror.2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde, page 30. From the entry eye-to-eye
When you dressed androgynously, did others still perceive you as a femme?1997 July 15, “Pronouns, Politics, and Femme Practice: An Interview with Minnie Bruce Pratt”, in Laura Harris, Elizabeth Crocker, editors…. From the entry androgynously
The auctioneeress can’t hear it, but I can perceive the phone ringing in Rosa’s flat.1997, Tibor Fischer, The Collector Collector, Metropolitan Books, →ISBN, pages 3, 11, 115, 139, 198, 219. From the entry auctioneeress
On the other, still others may perceive no metaproposition at all.1992, Jacob Neusner, Decoding the Talmud’s Exegetical Program: From Detail to Principle in the Bavli’s Quest for Generalization, →ISBN…. From the entry metaproposition
Caregivers who do not feel burdened are unlikely to perceive a need for services.1990, Confused Minds, Burdened Families, page 114. From the entry burdened
If we always perceive things as they really are, how could error be possible?1982, Peter Y. Windt, An Introduction to Philosophy, St. Paul: West Publishing Co., →ISBN, page 503. From the entry naive realist
Because the unconscious is outside time, it can perceive transformations beyond the limits of the ego.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London…. From the entry unconscious
Perceiving oneself as bisexual was often a stage of transition between heterosexuality and homosexuality.1979, Karla Jay, Allen Young, The Gay Report: Lesbians and Gay Men Speak Out. From the entry pansexual
The audience perceives those components or qualities concretely through Roland's acts.1975, Olifant, volume 2, page 86. From the entry concretely
Society, culture, and personality are merely three different ways of perceiving, cogniting, and organizing these patterns.1971, Morse Peckham, Art and Pornography: An Experiment in Explanation, →ISBN, page 250. From the entry cognite
An artist who perceives curvatives will also get the same impression when looking at the perspective.1964, Gezienus Doesschate, Perspective: fundamentals, controversials, history, page 49. From the entry curvative
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 16: Eumaeus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 584. From the entry dubiosity
How could these publishers foresense (what anyone can now perceive) that to give Dr.1913, Life. From the entry foresense
The suitors may never perceive what the test is: the investigatress knows admirably.1912, James Lane Allen, chapter II, in The Heroine in Bronze or A Portrait of a Girl: A Pastoral of the City, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry investigatress
And yet, we refuse to simply perceive the dark.2025 January 15, Jacob Geller, “Fear of Dark” (2:52 from the start), in (Please provide the book title or journal name). From the entry spin
Something capable of perceiving quectoseconds and carrying out billions of conversations at once while simultaneously simulating entire civilisations in parallel?2025 September 24, ExpectedBehaviour, Silly_King3635, “What do you think will happen if you annoyed a mind. For example, like a hub…. From the entry quectosecond
When people perceive the current political system as non-agentic, striving for change might indicate an effort of group-based control.2022, Álvaro Rodríguez-López et al., “Political change as group-based control: Threat to personal control reduces the support for…. From the entry non-agentic

Meaning of perceive

verb To become aware of, through the physical senses, to see; to understand.
verb To interpret something in a particular way.

Full definition of perceive

Questions about perceive in a sentence

How do you use perceive in a sentence?: Perceive is used as a verb. For example: “By acuteness of feeling, we perceive small objects or slight impressions.”
What is a short sentence with perceive?: “Humans and birds can perceive color.”
What does perceive mean?: Perceive means to become aware of, through the physical senses, to see; to understand.

Adapted from Wiktionary: perceive (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use perceive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/perceive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.