Palpable

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈpælpəbəl/

Definitions

  1. Able to be touched or felt physically; also, obvious or easily perceived by the mind
  2. easily perceived through touch or obvious to the senses and mind
  3. capable of being physically felt or mentally grasped with clarity

Etymology: Macbeth, alone at night, sees a dagger floating before him, handle toward his hand. He grabs at it and closes on nothing, yet he insists he sees it "in form as palpable / As this which now I draw." Shakespeare gave him a word that means "touchable" to describe the one thing in the room he could not touch. The root is Latin "palpare" (also "palpari"), "to touch softly, to stroke." Romans used it for a hand passing gently over something, and also for coaxing and flattering, the verbal equivalent of a pat. Late Latin built "palpabilis," "able to be touched or felt," which passed into French and then into English in the late 1300s. From the start it could mean both physically tangible and plain to the mind, as obvious as something under your fingers. One of its great early images is a darkness you could feel. In the Latin Bible, Moses calls down on Egypt a darkness "so thick that it may be felt," "palpari." Milton remembered it in "Paradise Lost," where that plague becomes "palpable darkness." Earlier in the poem, at the council of Hell, Beelzebub asks who will dare to cross the abyss of Chaos and find his way "through the palpable obscure." Satan volunteers. Shakespeare used it again at the end of "Hamlet," where the courtier Osric judges the fencing match: "A hit, a very palpable hit." That is the old literal sense, a touch the opponent felt, already sliding toward "undeniable." The same Latin verb survives in "palpate," what a doctor does with probing fingers. It also survives in "palpitate," from "palpitare," a Latin form meaning to flutter or throb: the gentle stroke of the hand turned into the beat of a frightened heart.

Synonyms: tangible, perceptible, noticeable, discernible, manifest

Antonyms: intangible, imperceptible, unnoticeable, hidden, obscure