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say it: PEN-uh-trayt
penetrate is a verb meaning "pass into or through, often by overcoming resistance". It is pronounced /ˈpɛnəˌtɹeɪt/ — PEN-uh-trayt. It carries 7 recorded senses.
come to understand
become clear or enter one's consciousness or emotions
“It dawned on him that she had betrayed him”
“she was penetrated with sorrow”
enter a group or organization in order to spy on the members
“The student organization was infiltrated by a traitor”
make one's way deeper into or through
“The hikers did not manage to penetrate the dense forest”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for penetrate come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.