to penetrate
30
7.5
- verb
- /ˈpɛnəˌtreɪt/
:
infiltrarse en
- The spy managed to penetrate the inner circle of the organization without raising any suspicion.
- penetrate the government
- efforts to penetrate
The crazy thing is though, like, you know, it's hard to penetrate this circle.
- The crazy thing is though, like, you know, it's hard to penetrate this circle.
- So Mossad actually has a requirement to penetrate into Jordan and navigate.
- Do worry about the capacity of either non state actors or hostile actors to penetrate systems.
- I mean, listen, we we got these these thumb sucking pieces from Jill Abramson saying that the media wasn't able to penetrate the Biden White House.
- And so the program that I LED was able to uncover this conspiracy, penetrated and ultimately bring it down.
- And then some of them probably more than, you know, more penetrated than others by, by the Russians, right.
- And it was all down to a very small handful of people, very small, but they weren't penetrated.
Examples
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Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to penetrate the highly-secured archive inside the Kremlin and retrieve Cobalt's file before he can destroy it.
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Thus, it becomes necessary to penetrate the politics of the global warming debate more effectively.
Academic text (2010) -
If this thing does what it says, it will allow us to penetrate their protection.
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How soon will the planes penetrate Russian radar cover?
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But if they could penetrate this station somehow, there might be more wonders to discover.
Fiction book (2001) -
What better way for Islamists to penetrate a village than to send a doctor?
Academic text (2008) -
The government itself has been penetrated.
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Your objective is to penetrate the radar installations of Gibraltar.
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Yet it was the most intensive effort to weaponize cultural knowledge and penetrate enemy psychology for strategic ends.
Academic text (2010) -
For example, India has watched with growing alarm Chinese attempts to penetrate Myanmar (Burma).
Academic text (1997)
Synonyms
127
7.4
To join a group in secret to get information or cause harm
75
3.8
To go into a place quietly so no one notices
Antonyms
How Hidden
Surface Forms
Morphology
penetrate = penetr + ate
The sense 'enter secretly' is a contextual extension of the base verb; because the stem is not a recognizable English word, the morphology is not helpful for learners.
Etymology
Penetrate comes from the old Latin word penetrāre, which means 'to go into' or 'reach the inside'. So to penetrate a group or place is to enter its inner parts, often secretly, to get information.