Make Your Point > Archived Issues > PERCIPIENT

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connect today's word to others: If you're percipient, you're good at observing things--so good that you're almost superhuman. Percipient is one of those nimble, poetic words with a slightly supernatural tone. So is cal____ous, which means "dark, dim, murky, or misty; or dimly seen or dimly understood." Here's Homer: "The goddess enter'd deep the cave Cal____ous." (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) make your point with... "PERCIPIENT" Percipient things and people are quick to notice and understand everything, especially the tiny differences between things. Pronunciation: per SIP ee unt Part of speech: Adjective. (Adjectives are describing words, like "large" or "late." They can be used in two ways: 1. Right before a noun, as in "a percipient thing" or "a percipient person." 2. After a linking verb, as in "It was percipient" or "He was percipient.") Other forms: Percipiently, percipience (or "percipiency," but that's less common). A percipient is also a person who perceives: in other words, a person who quickly and easily notices things, or a person with ESP (extrasensory perception). How to use it: When you need an exciting, sophisticated synonym of "observant" or "discriminating," especially if you want to hint that someone's powers of perception seem supernatural, pick "percipient." Talk about percipient people and percipient minds, percipient observation and percipient comments, percipient analyses, percipient choices and decisions, and so on. You can say that someone is percipient of something: "a mind percipient of beauty," "he's percipient of his surroundings." Or, say that someone has or shows percipience of something (or a percipience of something): "a painter whose work reveals a percipience of the human heart." To use the adverb, talk about people seeing, listening, sensing, recognizing, judging, writing, speaking, and expressing percipiently. How it compares to "perceptive:" It's a very close synonym of "perceptive," which we checked out recently. Both words describe people who easily notice and understand things, and both were formed from the verb "perceive," with Latin roots that literally mean "to take entirely." When you're taking it all in, you're being perceptive, and percipient. Here's the difference. "Perceptive" is about four times as common as "percipient." And "percipient" has an airy, mystical flavor left over from its older uses: in philosophy, a percipient is a being with the power to perceive, and in parapsychology, it's someone with supernatural perception. examples: I bet Poe believed this, too: that the wise and percipient narrator is such a common trope that it's fun, now and again, to see a story through the eyes of a madman. Here's what happens when Chad and I read the instructions for a new board game. I partially remember what I have to do on each turn, and Chad percipiently identifies the strategies that will lead to his victory. study it now: Look away from the screen to explain the definition in your own words. You’ll know you understand what "percipient" means when you can explain it without saying "easily taking notice of things" or "discerning." try it out: Think of someone you know who's especially attuned to something, like color, music, flavors, nature, weather, architecture, or other people's moods. Fill in the blanks: "The slightest change in (something) can't escape (someone's) percipience." Example: "This cat is so protective of our daughter: the slightest change in Taylor's tone of voice can't escape her percipience." before you review: Spend at least 20 seconds occupying your mind with the game below. Then try the review questions. Don’t go straight to the review now—let your working memory empty out first. Our game this month is "A Vocabulary of Movie Quotes." Jean Picker Firstenberg at the American Film Institute (AFI) says, "Great movie quotes become part of our cultural vocabulary." I believe it! I bet you can recall, verbatim, any of the AFI's "100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time" if all I give you is a single word from the quote. For example, if I give you the word KANSAS, I bet you can recite this: "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," from The Wizard of Oz (1939). I'll share each answer in the following issue. And we’ll work our way forward in time, starting with the oldest movies. Let’s play! From the previous issue: From a 1967 film, what's the famous quote that includes the word COMMUNICATE? Answer: From Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Try this today: From a 1968 film, what's the famous quote that includes the word APE? review today's word: 1. The exact opposite of PERCIPIENT is IMPERCIPIENT. And a close opposite of PERCIPIENT is A. ABSENTMINDED B. GENEROUS C. ENGAGED 2. With remarkable percipience, he _____. A. predicted how technological advances would complicate our relationships B. conveyed the enormous and fragile cake into the ballroom C. kept us laughing uproariously all through dinner Answers are below. a final word: Make Your Point is crafted with love and brought to you each weekday morning by Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From Liesl's blog:    36 ways to study words.    Why we forget words, & how to remember them.    How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes. Answers to review questions: 1. A 2. A