Palpable

ˈpælpəbəl

adjective

able to be touched or felt

The word 'palpable' comes from the Latin word 'palpabilis', which means capable of being touched or felt. It is often used to describe something that is easily perceived or understood, as if it can be physically touched or grasped.

She was the Genius of Patriotism—she was Patriotism embodied, concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye.

Mark Twain

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

At first Groleo had wanted the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease, but their misery was so palpable that she soon changed her mind and insisted they be freed.

George R. R. Martin

A Storm of Swords

’Tis but to atone For endless pleasure, by some coward blushes: Yet must I be a coward!—Honour rushes Too palpable before me—the sad look Of Jove—Minerva’s start—no bosom shook With awe of purity—no Cupid pinion In reverence veiled—my crystalline dominion Half lost, and all old hymns made nullity!

John Keats

Poetry

That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had felt continually all his life—was now near to him and, by the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and palpable. … Formerly he had feared the end.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

Both times she had felt a chill slip over her when his strange, muddy eyes happened to light upon her, and a palpable sense of relief when those eyes passed on.

King, Stephen

The Stand

The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.

Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol

The Prince’s cheek muscle twitches again, but he hasn’t managed a word of greeting when there is a small but palpable gasp from the crowd, and his head swivels along with the others to see.

Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister

One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke.

H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds

“Your soul is not yet lost.” The ship was a turmoil of darkness in which fear was so thick and palpable, it was all but a miasmic smell.

Asimov, Isaac

Foundation 1 - Foundation

In its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain to see as the water in a river or the sun in the sky.

Arundhati Roy

The god of small things

He did not seem afraid of his superior, despite Garland's palpable wrath.

Dick, Philip K.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

"Johnny Cash is everything," Henry replied gravely, and there was a moment of silence palpable in its considering surprise.

Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, Book 2)

So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

Herman Melville

Moby Dick

A palpable excuse, it seems to me; I was about to leave him in my dust."

George R.R. Martin

The Tales of Dunk & Egg

Providence appears to me to have no share in this affair; and happily so, for instead of the invisible, impalpable agent of celestial rewards and punishments, I shall find one both palpable and visible, on whom I shall revenge myself, I assure you, for all I have suffered during the last month.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

The realities of the soul are nonetheless realities because they are not visible and palpable.

Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist, No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation, and that from some other, Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

“Well, let me know when you work it out,” he says, and the pain in his voice is palpable.

Suzanne Collins

Hunger Games 1 - The Hunger Games

It was not air, never air, but the palpable and living emanation of trees and swamp.

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

You never saw him anyway screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a father because he was too old or something or on account of his face (it was a palpable case of doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose.

James Joyce

Ulysses

“He’s the Worm!” Siona said and the venom in her voice was almost palpable.

Frank Herbert

God Emperor of Dune

“If the magical community got wind that I had approached the giants — people hate them, Dumbledore — end of my career —” “You are blinded,” said Dumbledore, his voice rising now, the aura of power around him palpable, his eyes blazing once more, “by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius!

J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I—I fancied I heard the bell ring.” This was such a palpable untruth that I did not trouble to reply.

Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

As to this little poem being a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the development of national taste, which the history of every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were of the Homeric age.

Homer

The Iliad

The heat from the fire pit was palpable even at a distance; for the wild-lings, it had to be blistering.

Martin, George, R. R.

A Dance With Dragons

who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight, Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive The happy isle?

John Milton

Paradise Lost

Listen to me, Anselmo my friend, and be not impatient to answer me until I have said what occurs to me touching the object of thy desire, for there will be time enough left for thee to reply and for me to hear.” “Be it so,” said Anselmo, “say what thou wilt.” Lothario then went on to say, “It seems to me, Anselmo, that thine is just now the temper of mind which is always that of the Moors, who can never be brought to see the error of their creed by quotations from the Holy Scriptures, or by reasons which depend upon the examination of the understanding or are founded upon the articles of faith, but must have examples that are palpable, easy, intelligible, capable of proof, not admitting of doubt, with mathematical demonstrations that cannot be denied, like, ‘If equals be taken from equals, the remainders are equal:’ and if they do not understand this in words, and indeed they do not, it has to be shown to them with the hands, and put before their eyes, and even with all this no one succeeds in convincing them of the truth of our holy religion.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote

The one is a plain palpable object; the other an abstract notion, which, though it can be made sufficiently intelligible, is not altogether so natural and obvious.

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations