Can you call inanimate things "perspicacious"? [closed]

Question

I learned the word "perspicacious" a while ago, but I think I might be using it incorrectly. Recently, I tried to use it in writing to say

He wrote a perspicacious report on . . .

But something about it sounded off. So I changed it to

He perspicaciously wrote a report on . . .

But that wasn't exactly what I wanted to say. I wanted to suggest that his report deeply and acutely penetrates the issue, not that his writing process was illuminating.

Was the first example actually an incorrect usage of the word? If not, why did it strike me as strange or wrong?

My best guess is that "perspicacious" is a word that can only apply to people, or at least to animate beings; hence, when I applied it to something inanimate, it sounded strange. Is that an accurate assumption? Or is there something else I'm misunderstanding about the word?

Answer 1

It's common enough to attribute human attributes to human communications. "I wrote an angry letter" of course doesn't mean that the paper and ink were upset. But it also says more than "I was angry when I wrote the letter." It means that the letter is a vehicle for my anger; the words contain and convey a human expression of anger.

In this sense, the letter (or a book report) is not entirely an "inanimate object." It’s not even entirely an object; if I print out two copies of my letter, it's "the same letter." What we're talking about is a piece of "intellectual property," a body of human thought and communication; it's not animate, but it's an artifact of animate expression. It doesn't make sense to talk about a "perspicacious rolling pin," a literal object usually devoid of a semiotic payload, but it makes sense to talk about an "insightful comment" or even a "whimsical sculpture."