IMPERCEPTIBLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does imperceptible mean? 

• IMPERCEPTIBLE (adjective)
  The adjective IMPERCEPTIBLE has 1 sense:

1. impossible or difficult to perceive by the mind or senses

  Familiarity information: IMPERCEPTIBLE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPERCEPTIBLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Impossible or difficult to perceive by the mind or senses

Synonyms:

imperceptible; unperceivable

Context example:

color is unperceivable to the touch

Similar:

impalpable (not perceptible to the touch)

incognizable; incognoscible (incapable of being perceived or known)

indiscernible; insensible; undetectable (barely able to be perceived)

subliminal (below the threshold of conscious perception)

unobservable (not accessible to direct observation)

Also:

inaudible; unhearable (impossible to hear; imperceptible by the ear)

impalpable (imperceptible to the senses or the mind)

invisible; unseeable (impossible or nearly impossible to see; imperceptible by the eye)

Antonym:

perceptible (capable of being perceived by the mind or senses)

Derivation:

imperceptibility (the property of being imperceptible by the mind or the senses)

 Context examples 

Seismic vibrations that are almost imperceptible to human ears ripple through the rocks.

(Song of the red rock arches, National Science Foundation)

In one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost—love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered—my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained—a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A very tall man, who showed a pair of broad, bottle-green shoulders high above his neighbours, was looking very hard in our direction, and I assured myself that a quick exchange of almost imperceptible signals was going on between him and the Corinthian baronet.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.

(White Fang, by Jack London)