Sense
from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
sense
n 1: a general conscious awareness; "a sense of security"; "a
sense of happiness"; "a sense of danger"; "a sense of self"
2: the meaning of a word or expression; the way in which a word
or expression or situation can be interpreted; "the
dictionary gave several senses for the word"; "in the best
sense charity is really a duty"; "the signifier is linked to
the signified" [syn: {sense}, {signified}]
3: the faculty through which the external world is apprehended;
"in the dark he had to depend on touch and on his senses of
smell and hearing" [syn: {sense}, {sensation}, {sentience},
{sentiency}, {sensory faculty}]
4: sound practical judgment; "Common sense is not so common";
"he hasn't got the sense God gave little green apples";
"fortunately she had the good sense to run away" [syn:
{common sense}, {good sense}, {gumption}, {horse sense},
{sense}, {mother wit}]
5: a natural appreciation or ability; "a keen musical sense"; "a
good sense of timing"
v 1: perceive by a physical sensation, e.g., coming from the
skin or muscles; "He felt the wind"; "She felt an object
brushing her arm"; "He felt his flesh crawl"; "She felt the
heat when she got out of the car" [syn: {feel}, {sense}]
2: detect some circumstance or entity automatically; "This robot
can sense the presence of people in the room"; "particle
detectors sense ionization"
3: become aware of not through the senses but instinctively; "I
sense his hostility"; "i smell trouble"; "smell out
corruption" [syn: {smell}, {smell out}, {sense}]
4: comprehend; "I sensed the real meaning of his letter"
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Sense \Sense\, n. [L. sensus, from sentire, sensum, to perceive,
to feel, from the same root as E. send; cf. OHG. sin sense,
mind, sinnan to go, to journey, G. sinnen to meditate, to
think: cf. F. sens. For the change of meaning cf. {See}, v.
t. See {Send}, and cf. {Assent}, {Consent}, {Scent}, v. t.,
{Sentence}, {Sentient}.]
1. (Physiol.) A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving
external objects by means of impressions made upon certain
organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of
perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the
senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. See
{Muscular sense}, under {Muscular}, and {Temperature
sense}, under {Temperature}.
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Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep. --Shak.
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What surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate. --Milton.
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The traitor Sense recalls
The soaring soul from rest. --Keble.
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2. Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation;
sensibility; feeling.
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In a living creature, though never so great, the
sense and the affects of any one part of the body
instantly make a transcursion through the whole.
--Bacon.
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3. Perception through the intellect; apprehension;
recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation.
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This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover.
--Sir P.
Sidney.
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High disdain from sense of injured merit. --Milton.
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4. Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good
mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound,
true, or reasonable; rational meaning. "He speaks sense."
--Shak.
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He raves; his words are loose
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense.
--Dryden.
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5. That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or
opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.
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I speak my private but impartial sense
With freedom. --Roscommon.
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The municipal council of the city had ceased to
speak the sense of the citizens. --Macaulay.
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6. Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of
words or phrases; the sense of a remark.
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So they read in the book in the law of God
distinctly, and gave the sense. --Neh. viii.
8.
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I think 't was in another sense. --Shak.
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7. Moral perception or appreciation.
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Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no
sense of the most friendly offices. --L' Estrange.
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8. (Geom.) One of two opposite directions in which a line,
surface, or volume, may be supposed to be described by the
motion of a point, line, or surface.
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{Common sense}, according to Sir W. Hamilton:
(a) "The complement of those cognitions or convictions
which we receive from nature, which all men possess in
common, and by which they test the truth of knowledge
and the morality of actions."
(b) "The faculty of first principles." These two are the
philosophical significations.
(c) "Such ordinary complement of intelligence, that,if a
person be deficient therein, he is accounted mad or
foolish."
(d) When the substantive is emphasized: "Native practical
intelligence, natural prudence, mother wit, tact in
behavior, acuteness in the observation of character,
in contrast to habits of acquired learning or of
speculation."
{Moral sense}. See under {Moral},
(a) .
{The inner sense}, or {The internal sense}, capacity of the
mind to be aware of its own states; consciousness;
reflection. "This source of ideas every man has wholly in
himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to
do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and
might properly enough be called internal sense." --Locke.
{Sense capsule} (Anat.), one of the cartilaginous or bony
cavities which inclose, more or less completely, the
organs of smell, sight, and hearing.
{Sense organ} (Physiol.), a specially irritable mechanism by
which some one natural force or form of energy is enabled
to excite sensory nerves; as the eye, ear, an end bulb or
tactile corpuscle, etc.
{Sense organule} (Anat.), one of the modified epithelial
cells in or near which the fibers of the sensory nerves
terminate.
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Syn: Understanding; reason.
Usage: {Sense}, {Understanding}, {Reason}. Some philosophers
have given a technical signification to these terms,
which may here be stated. Sense is the mind's acting
in the direct cognition either of material objects or
of its own mental states. In the first case it is
called the outer, in the second the inner, sense.
Understanding is the logical faculty, i. e., the power
of apprehending under general conceptions, or the
power of classifying, arranging, and making
deductions. Reason is the power of apprehending those
first or fundamental truths or principles which are
the conditions of all real and scientific knowledge,
and which control the mind in all its processes of
investigation and deduction. These distinctions are
given, not as established, but simply because they
often occur in writers of the present day.
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from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
297 Moby Thesaurus words for "sense":
IQ, absorb, acceptation, admissibility, affect, affection,
affective meaning, air, anticipate, appreciate, appreciation,
appreciation of differences, appreciativeness, apprehend,
apprehension, artistic judgment, assimilate, atmosphere, aura,
awareness, balance, be aware of, be conscious of, be sensible of,
be with one, bearing, believe, brains, burden, caliber, capacity,
catch, catch on, center, climate, cognizance, coherence, coloring,
common sense, comprehend, comprehension, conceive, conception,
connoisseurship, connotation, consciousness, consequence, consider,
cool head, coolheadedness, coolness, core, credit,
critical niceness, criticalness, deductive power, deem, delicacy,
denotation, descry, detect, dig, digest, discern, discernment,
discretion, discriminating taste, discriminatingness,
discrimination, discriminativeness, distinguish, divine, drift,
due sense of, effect, emotion, emotional charge, emotional shade,
esemplastic power, espy, essence, experience, extension, faculty,
fastidiousness, fathom, feel, feel deeply, feel intuitively,
feeling, feeling tone, fine palate, finesse, focus, follow, force,
foreboding, foresight, get, get hold of, get the drift,
get the idea, get the picture, gist, good sense,
grammatical meaning, grasp, gumption, gut reaction, have,
have a feeling, have a hunch, have a sensation, have it taped,
have the impression, hear, heartthrob, hold, horse sense, idea,
ideation, identify, impact, implication, import, impression,
integrative power, intellect, intellectual grasp,
intellectual power, intellectualism, intellectuality, intelligence,
intelligence quotient, intelligibility, intendment, intension,
intuit, intuition, judgement, judgment, judiciousness, just know,
justifiability, justness, ken, know, knowledge, learn, level head,
levelheadedness, lexical meaning, literal meaning, logic,
logicality, logicalness, lucidity, make out, making distinctions,
marbles, master, matter, meaning, meat, mental age,
mental capacity, mental grasp, mental ratio, mentality, message,
milieu, mind, mother wit, native wit, niceness of distinction,
nicety, note, notice, nous, nuance, nucleus, overtone, palate,
passion, penetration, perceive, percept, perception, pertinence,
pick up, pith, plain sense, plausibility, point, power of mind,
practical consequence, practical mind, practical wisdom,
practicality, presentiment, profound sense, prudence, purport,
quality, quick-wittedness, quickness, range of meaning,
rationality, reaction, read, real meaning, realize, reason,
reasonability, reasonableness, reasoning power,
receive an impression, recognition, recognize, reference, referent,
refined discrimination, refined palate, refinement, relation,
relevance, respond, respond to stimuli, response,
response to stimuli, sagacity, saneness, sanity, savvy, scope,
scope of mind, see, seize, seize the meaning, selectiveness,
semantic cluster, semantic field, sensation, sense impression,
sense perception, sensibility, sensibleness, sensitivity,
sensory experience, sentiment, short, significance, significancy,
signification, significatum, signifie, smarts, smell,
sober-mindedness, soberness, sobriety, sound sense, soundness,
span of meaning, spirit, spot, spy, structural meaning, substance,
subtlety, sum, sum and substance, suspect, sweet reason,
symbolic meaning, tact, tactfulness, take, take in, taste, tenor,
think, thinking power, thrust, tone, totality of associations,
touch, transferred meaning, unadorned meaning, undercurrent,
understand, understanding, undertone, upshot, value, wisdom, wit
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