MEANING
1. Allowing liquids or gases to pass through a material or barrier.
2. Allowing people, information, or influences to move across social or conceptual boundaries.
Use it for
describing a material that lets fluid pass; comparing barriers’ ability to transmit a substance; explaining why a physical boundary is not fully isolatingDescribes passage across a boundary without assuming that the boundary has disappeared. Academic functions: Significance / Scope, Theory / Conceptual Language, Causation / Relationships.
Words that belong together
- permeable membrane
- permeable material
- permeable to water
On the page
The design review contrasts a permeable surface with paving that directs all runoff into drains.
A membrane can be permeable to one substance while blocking another.
The study treats the boundary between professional and volunteer roles as permeable rather than fixed.
Permeable disciplinary borders allow the historian to borrow methods without erasing differences between fields.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- permeable
Usage notes
Adjective, often permeable to a named substance or influence. More permeable and most permeable are natural; specify what can pass through. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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