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interpenetrate

American  
[in-ter-pen-i-treyt] / ˌɪn tərˈpɛn ɪˌtreɪt /

verb (used with object)

interpenetrated, interpenetrating
  1. to penetrate thoroughly; permeate.

  2. to penetrate with (something else) mutually or reciprocally.


verb (used without object)

interpenetrated, interpenetrating
  1. to penetrate between things or parts.

  2. to penetrate each other.

interpenetrate British  
/ ˌɪntəˈpɛnɪˌtreɪt /

verb

  1. to penetrate (something) thoroughly; pervade

  2. to penetrate each other or one another mutually

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of interpenetrate

First recorded in 1800–10; inter- + penetrate

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Specifically, this problem was unsolved for smooth Möbius strips that are “embedded” instead of “immersed,” meaning they “don't interpenetrate themselves,” or self-intersect, says Richard Evan Schwartz, a mathematician at Brown University.

From Scientific American Sep. 12, 2023

Negative space and positive materiality interpenetrate in an extraordinary formal condensation of Cubist technique.

From Los Angeles Times Oct. 26, 2022

It works both ways, too; art and life interpenetrate each other.

From The Guardian May 30, 2014

“The Planetary Omnibus” immerses the reader in a world where our apparent reality and low-rent, pop-culture fixtures that refused to go away interpenetrate each other to create a new status quo.

From New York Times Feb. 20, 2014

All you need to bear in mind is that rhetoric is a fuzzy art: these divisions overlap and interpenetrate.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith

Finally, we identified where and how competing discourses interpenetrated.

From Slate Apr. 12, 2023

Biomorphism was also central to Noguchi’s work, and he gives it an anguished turn, creating wounded landscapes, pitted and slashed, and standing abstract figures that are punctured and interpenetrated by dull, blade-like forms.

From Washington Post Oct. 28, 2015

Imagination and the life of Salem had interpenetrated.

From Time Magazine Archive

The possibility that all things known and unknown are interpenetrated.

From Washington Post

Apart from this incident, "Absalom's Hair" is so interpenetrated with a sense of reality that we seem to live the story rather than read it.

From Essays on Scandinavian Literature by Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth

With his interpenetrating spaces, Wright “destroyed the box,” as one critic put it, allowing his rooms to flow freely.

From The Wall Street Journal Jun. 27, 2026

Post-deposition treatments such as thermal annealing may have a role in creating and stabilizing the nanoscale interpenetrating network of materials.

From Nature Aug. 15, 2012

St. Helena with a dozen Napoleons on it, huge solipsisms crashing into one another, interpenetrating, great weather balloons of malignant ego drifting in the subtropical breezes.

From Time Magazine Archive

In the 1950s, Rickey made a series of sculptures called Little Machines of Unconceived Use, whose metal surfaces traveled in interpenetrating orbits on pivots within pivots within pivots.

From Time Magazine Archive

Again, the Parable of the Leaven describes the development of doctrine in another respect, in its active, engrossing, and interpenetrating power.

From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by Newman, John Henry Cardinal

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