perceive

in a sentence

grouped by contextual meaning

She finally perceived the futility of her protest.

When groups perceive that it's in their interest to work hard and achieve things, members of that group outperform other similarly situated individuals.  (source) J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, 2016

The perceived demand for "consumer biologicals" in the 1990s was high.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

Maybe Eric perceives Four as a potential threat to his position.  (source) Veronica Roth, Divergent, 2011

It expands your selfesteem and connects you in your well-pressed suit to the things that slip through the world otherwise unperceived.†  (source) Don DeLillo, Underworld, 1997

He brooded at length over what he perceived to be his father's moral shortcomings, the hypocrisy of his parents' lifestyle, the tyranny of their conditional love.  (source) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996

It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.  (source) George Orwell, 1984, 1949

33:14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.†  (source) The Bible, Old Testament, 1611

14:7 Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge.†  (source) The Bible, Old Testament, 1611

As he moved away he saw Lawrence Lefferts, tall and resplendent, leading his wife up to be introduced; and heard Gertrude Lefferts say, as she beamed on the Countess with her large unperceiving smile: "But I think we used to go to dancing-school together when we were children—."†  (source) Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920

Ella Stowbody, the professional, perceiving that it was because of a conspiracy of jealousy that she had been given a small part, alternated between lofty amusement and Christian patience.  (source) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, 1920

I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world.†  (source) Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths, 1941

To Him That Was Crucified My spirit to yours dear brother, Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, I do not sound your name, but I understand you, I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also, That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession, We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies, Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted, We hear the baw†  (source) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

It's one thing to perceive something with the senses and another to understand its importance.

You should be able to perceive the name without being told.  (source) Lois Lowry, The Giver, 1993

Medea had said she did not know if those slaves in her father's halls could perceive what happened to them.  (source) Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018

And he hadn't perceived them because he had become accustomed to them.  (source) Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, 1988

He ascends, falls at a slope, strikes the rebar and returns to the ground. I perceive a triangle. The event makes sense when I think of it in these terms.  (source) Tara Westover, Educated, 2018

but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.  (source) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 1905

He wore what I believe was called a Palm Beach suit, tan, smartly tailored and perceivably high-priced, and it helped make him appear not even a distant cousin of that wild apparition I had first set eyes on only days before, disheveled, in baggy slacks, raging at Sophie in the hallway.†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

When I leaned forward to kiss her, she turned away with an expert shrug, minimal, impersonal, that managed to place me on the outer brow of the perceivable.†  (source) Don DeLillo, Underworld, 1997

Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after having listened to the exhortations of her father.  (source) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1831

When she perceives Franz's trouble she begins to bustle, and says: "Why did not someone say I was wanted?"  (source) Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929

For the gunslinger, the tenseness of a coming climax was as unperceivable but as real and as ac-cretive as the fatigue of propelling the handcar.†  (source) Stephen King, The Gunslinger, 1981

There was something innately strange about it, as though there had always been an inner core to the gym which I had never perceived before, quite different from its generally accepted appearance.  (source) John Knowles, A Separate Peace, 1959

In short, we can only have inexact conceptions of things we perceive with our senses.  (source) Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, 1991