perceptible
adjective
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See here: if something is perceptible, you can perceive it (“to notice or become aware of”) or capture it with your senses. Those who are linguistically perceptive may wonder if perceptible comes to us from Latin. It does indeed. Arriving in English by way of Late Latin perceptibilis, perceptible comes from a form of percipere (“to perceive”), which comes from Latin capere (“to take”) and the prefix per- (“thoroughly”). Perceptible shares the capere part of its ancestry with a number of other English words related to seizing or being seized, including capture, captor, captivate, and even catch. An even closer relation of perceptible is perceptive: while perceptible describes what can be perceived, perceptive describes the one who does the perceiving. Perceptive was formed in English from perception, which is also from percipere.
Synonyms
Examples of perceptible in a Sentence
Sergey Radchenko, NPR, 19 June 2024
What really stood out was a slight down slope—one that was barely perceptible pedaling back up in the opposite direction.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 12 May 2024
For day-to-day decisions, coin tosses are as good as random because a 1 percent bias isn't perceptible with just a few coin flips, says statistician Amelia McNamara of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who wasn't involved in the new research.
—Shi En Kim, Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2024
The doctor assured me that the surgery only rarely changes the timbre of the voice in a perceptible way.
—Dessa Dessa Tanya Pérez Alec K. Redfearn, New York Times, 12 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for perceptible 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'perceptible.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near perceptible
Cite this Entry
“Perceptible.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perceptible. Accessed 4 Jul. 2024.
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perceptible
adjective
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perceptible
adjective
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