What's the difference between impenetrable and impervious?

Impenetrable


Definition:

  • (a.) Incapable of being penetrated or pierced; not admitting the passage of other bodies; not to be entered; impervious; as, an impenetrable shield.
  • (a.) Having the property of preventing any other substance from occupying the same space at the same time.
  • (a.) Inaccessible, as to knowledge, reason, sympathy, etc.; unimpressible; not to be moved by arguments or motives; as, an impenetrable mind, or heart.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) During the entire process the passage between the lumen and the intercellular space remained blocked by the tight junctions, as shown by their impenetrability to ferritin.
  • (2) Veering between a patronising video , a vague report and impenetrable financial data does not amount to openness and accountability.
  • (3) Similar results were obtained with subcutaneous or intraperitoneal thymus grafts and with thymus grafts within cell-impenetrable diffusion chambers.
  • (4) On the other hand, the performance of a material that is liquid-proof is absolute--it is impenetrable and can be accurately described as impervious.
  • (5) In a 70-page document that was largely ignored and almost completely impenetrable, he said the US intended to treat cyberspace as a military battleground.
  • (6) This last phenomenon appears to precede the entry of some axons into the neuropil and suggests that the glia limitans may not necessarily represent an impenetrable barrier to the passage of regenerating axons into the CNS.
  • (7) It appears that the major part of the exclusion volume is due to the collagen-fibril as a rod and the dextran coil as an impenetrable sphere.
  • (8) Some of the games are based around recognisable sports (like football), others around ancient samurai conflicts – but whatever the theme, the nature of the action is absolutely impenetrable to the casual onlooker.
  • (9) Many of the particles could therefore pass freely through tightly woven fabrics with pores up to 10-15 micrometer which might seem to be impenetrable to whole corneocytes, typically larger than 30 X 40 micrometer in the hydrated state.
  • (10) QSI's intentions are no doubt honest but if players as important as goalkeepers can be owned by anonymous third parties in impenetrable offshore companies the potential for match fixing is clear.
  • (11) The more complex a system, the more unintelligible and impenetrable is the map of possible side effects.
  • (12) Spontaneous postoperative expulsion of an IUD resulted in blockage or distortion of the anastomosis in 1 monkey; and in another the anastomosis was patent for a least 5 months, but later became impenetrable.
  • (13) Lactoperoxidase-catalyzed iodination (LCI) was carried out under impenetrable conditions in intact electroplax (where protein exposure on the external surface is monitored) and in split electroplax (where total protein labeling on both the external and internal monolayers of the plasma membrane bilayer is monitored).
  • (14) For 45 minutes, Arjen Robben twisted and turned with the ball only to find himself confronted by an impenetrable thicket of blue-shirted Brazil defenders.
  • (15) And viewed again in this mood, Libeskind's building, with its blank excoriated surfaces, looks closed to understanding; in material as in spirit, impenetrable.
  • (16) Subsequent chemical analysis of sperm-penetrable and impenetrable samples indicated that the concentrations of mucus nondialyzable solids (NDS), mucins, and soluble proteins were significantly higher in impenetrable specimens.
  • (17) The mites ate the germ before the endosperm, leaving an impenetrable layer of crushed endosperm cells between these regions.
  • (18) Two decades after Tutu made it a shining city of defiance amid seemingly impenetrable darkness, Cape Town is finding economic liberation harder than the political kind.
  • (19) Insensitivities at 190 and 100 nm were common to all five types of spores, indicating that these wavelengths were particularly impenetrant and absorbed by the outer layer materials.
  • (20) By announcing a huge programme of bond purchases , much bigger relative to the eurozone bond market than the quantitative easing implemented in the United States, Britain, or Japan, the ECB president, Mario Draghi, erected the impenetrable firewall that had long been needed to protect the monetary Union from a Lehman-style financial meltdown.

Impervious


Definition:

  • (a.) Not pervious; not admitting of entrance or passage through; as, a substance impervious to water or air.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Placement of impervious knitted Dacron velour aortic grafts in baboons reproduced platelet consumption that progressively normalized over six weeks postoperatively.
  • (2) Below-zero temperatures crowned the top of the US from Idaho to Minnesota, where many roads still had an inch-thick plate of ice, polished smooth by traffic and impervious to ice-melting chemicals.
  • (3) There is all sorts of opacity which makes it easy for an employee to suffer retaliation.” Despite recent reforms to improve transparency and accountability, the organisation remains impervious to public scrutiny, with no established mechanism for freedom of information – a right which more than 100 governments around the world have enshrined in law, and is openly advocated by UN bodies such as Unesco.
  • (4) Persons suffering from major narcissistic problems generally are assumed to be impervious to time-limited treatments.
  • (5) Or you can do it at the desk with your smartphone if you can remember the website address, don’t mind the data roaming charges, can remember your national insurance number and are impervious to the long queue developing behind you”.
  • (6) On the other hand, the performance of a material that is liquid-proof is absolute--it is impenetrable and can be accurately described as impervious.
  • (7) A mathematical solution has been obtained for the indentation creep and stress-relaxation behavior of articular cartilage where the tissue is modeled as a layer of linear KLM biphasic material of thickness h bonded to an impervious, rigid bony substrate.
  • (8) This is the essence of the problem, and sadly, Festinger's words ring true today: the conviction of humans is all too often impervious to the very evidence in front of them.
  • (9) The amplitude of quantal events is impervious to marked changes in presynaptic depolarization and is not affected by experimental procedures which promote accumulation of calcium ions in the terminals.
  • (10) Many such cases prove impervious to extensive articulation therapy, yet physical management may constitute "over-correction" with undesirable sequelae.
  • (11) Purified thymidylate synthetase can be assayed radiochemically using labelled deoxyuridine monophosphate as substrate, but cells are impervious to deoxyuridine monophosphate and so intracellular thymidylate synthetase activity cannot be assayed in this way.
  • (12) Heseltine's achievements have been matched by conspicuous failures, but his self belief is almost thrillingly impregnable, making him quite impervious to any such impression.
  • (13) It is rife with secrecy, top-down managerial manipulation, impervious to any outside scrutiny, contemptuous of any questioning, and has embraced extensive surveillance and discriminatory policing of religious and racial minorities.
  • (14) These actions of YM14673 were not due to a direct interference with brain TRH binding or a nature impervious to a TRH-degrading enzyme.
  • (15) The numerous tight junctions, impervious to the tracer, are always accompanied by a profusion of microfilaments.
  • (16) A newborn baby with a large unruptured omphalocele was successfully treated by covering the sac with a skin-like polymer membrane that is flexible, elastic, and impervious to bacteria and water.
  • (17) Bateman's unspeakable imaginings are the disease of an imperviously complacent world.
  • (18) In these measurements with an impervious, plane-ended indenter, the equilibrium deformation was systematically greater than values predicted from the instant response by the linear biphasic theory.
  • (19) "He appears impervious even to input from top Afghans."
  • (20) A tractor owned by a member of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn is parked outside of a shelter and a dozen young men from Afghanistan rest against its wheels, grateful for the shade and impervious to the protest.