percipient

comparative more percipient · superlative most percipient

1. Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.

   Mehring was a well-read and percipient critic and quite aware of the difference between great and mediocre art.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 60

   2 more examples

   Fasting, yet not of want Percipient, he on that mysterious steed Had reach’d his resting-place, For expectation kept his nature up.

   1801, Robert Southey, “The Sixth Book”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume II, London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC, page 8

   [...] he calls attention to the use of glasses […] The eye itself is no more percipient than the glass; is quite as much the instrument of the true self, and also as foreign to the true self, as the glass is.

   1874, John Tyndall, Advancement of Science: The Inaugural Address of Prof. John Tyndall ... Delivered Before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Belfast, August 19, 1874, New York: Asa K. Butts & Co., page 43

2. datededucationPerceiving events only in the moment, without reflection, like a very young child.

plural percipients

1. human sciencesOne who perceives something.

   As anatomy, physiology and, later, psychology have developed into more or less well-organized sciences, they have necessarily and rightly come to incorporate the study of, among other things, the structures, mechanisms, and functionings of animal and human bodies qua percipient.

   1954: Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, dilemma vii: Perception, page 99 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)

   Synonyms: perceiver, perceptor

2. parapsychologyOne who has perceived a paranormal event.

   In the course of investigating the haunting, I interviewed several percipients.