feeling

feeling
    n 1: the experiencing of affective and emotional states; "she
         had a feeling of euphoria"; "he had terrible feelings of
         guilt"; "I disliked him and the feeling was mutual"
    2: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his
       impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings
       about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his
       sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying" [syn:
       {impression}, {feeling}, {belief}, {notion}, {opinion}]
    3: the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect
       that it has on people; "the feel of the city excited him"; "a
       clergyman improved the tone of the meeting"; "it had the
       smell of treason" [syn: {spirit}, {tone}, {feel}, {feeling},
       {flavor}, {flavour}, {look}, {smell}]
    4: a physical sensation that you experience; "he had a queasy
       feeling"; "I had a strange feeling in my leg"; "he lost all
       feeling in his arm"
    5: the sensation produced by pressure receptors in the skin;
       "she likes the touch of silk on her skin"; "the surface had a
       greasy feeling" [syn: {touch}, {touch sensation}, {tactual
       sensation}, {tactile sensation}, {feeling}]
    6: an intuitive understanding of something; "he had a great
       feeling for music" [syn: {feeling}, {intuitive feeling}]
    

Feel \Feel\ (f[=e]l), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Felt} (f[e^]lt); p.
   pr. & vb. n. {Feeling}.] [AS. f[=e]lan; akin to OS.
   gif[=o]lian to perceive, D. voelen to feel, OHG. fuolen, G.
   f["u]hlen, Icel. f[=a]lma to grope, and prob. to AS. folm
   palm of the hand, L. palma. Cf. {Fumble}, {Palm}.]
   1. To perceive by the touch; to take cognizance of by means
      of the nerves of sensation distributed all over the body,
      especially by those of the skin; to have sensation excited
      by contact of (a thing) with the body or limbs.
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            Who feel
            Those rods of scorpions and those whips of steel.
                                                  --Creecn.
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   2. To touch; to handle; to examine by touching; as, feel this
      piece of silk; hence, to make trial of; to test; often
      with out.
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            Come near, . . . that I may feel thee, my son.
                                                  --Gen. xxvii.
                                                  21.
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            He hath this to feel my affection to your honor.
                                                  --Shak.
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   3. To perceive by the mind; to have a sense of; to
      experience; to be affected by; to be sensible of, or
      sensitive to; as, to feel pleasure; to feel pain.
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            Teach me to feel another's woe.       --Pope.
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            Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil
            thing.                                --Eccl. viii.
                                                  5.
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            He best can paint them who shall feel them most.
                                                  --Pope.
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            Mankind have felt their strength and made it felt.
                                                  --Byron.
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   4. To take internal cognizance of; to be conscious of; to
      have an inward persuasion of.
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            For then, and not till then, he felt himself.
                                                  --Shak.
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   5. To perceive; to observe. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
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   {To feel the helm} (Naut.), to obey it.
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Feeling \Feel"ing\, a.
   1. Possessing great sensibility; easily affected or moved;
      as, a feeling heart.
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   2. Expressive of great sensibility; attended by, or evincing,
      sensibility; as, he made a feeling representation of his
      wrongs.
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Feeling \Feel"ing\, n.
   1. The sense by which the mind, through certain nerves of the
      body, perceives external objects, or certain states of the
      body itself; that one of the five senses which resides in
      the general nerves of sensation distributed over the body,
      especially in its surface; the sense of touch; nervous
      sensibility to external objects.
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            Why was the sight
            To such a tender ball as the eye confined, . . .
            And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused?
                                                  --Milton.
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   2. An act or state of perception by the sense above
      described; an act of apprehending any object whatever; an
      act or state of apprehending the state of the soul itself;
      consciousness.
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            The apprehension of the good
            Gives but the greater feeling to the worse. --Shak.
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   3. The capacity of the soul for emotional states; a high
      degree of susceptibility to emotions or states of the
      sensibility not dependent on the body; as, a man of
      feeling; a man destitute of feeling.
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   4. Any state or condition of emotion; the exercise of the
      capacity for emotion; any mental state whatever; as, a
      right or a wrong feeling in the heart; our angry or kindly
      feelings; a feeling of pride or of humility.
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            A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind. --Garrick.
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            Tenderness for the feelings of others. --Macaulay.
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   5. That quality of a work of art which embodies the mental
      emotion of the artist, and is calculated to affect
      similarly the spectator. --Fairholt.

   Syn: Sensation; emotion; passion; sentiment; agitation;
        opinion. See {Emotion}, {Passion}, {Sentiment}.
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279 Moby Thesaurus words for "feeling":
      action, affect, affection, affectional, affective, affectivity,
      air, ambiance, ambience, analog process, analytic, appreciation,
      appreciation of differences, appreciativeness, ardency, ardor,
      artistic judgment, assumption, atmosphere, attitude, aura,
      awareness, behavior, behavior pattern, belief, benevolence, breath,
      brush, caress, caressing, clairvoyant, clemency, climate,
      climate of opinion, commiseration, common belief,
      community sentiment, compassion, compassionate, conceit, concept,
      conception, concern, conclusion, condolence, connoisseurship,
      consciousness, consensus gentium, consideration, contact,
      conviction, critical niceness, criticalness, cutaneous sense,
      delicacy, demonstrative, digital process, discriminating taste,
      discriminatingness, discrimination, discriminativeness,
      emotiometabolic, emotiomotor, emotion, emotional, emotional charge,
      emotional shade, emotions, emotiovascular, emotive, emotivity,
      empathy, estimate, estimation, ethos, examinational, examinatorial,
      examining, experience, explorational, explorative, exploratory,
      eye, fact-finding, fastidiousness, favor, feel, feeling tone,
      feelings, fervency, fervor, fine palate, finesse, fingering,
      fingertip caress, flick, forbearance, foreboding, forefeeling,
      forgiveness, friction, frottage, funny feeling, general belief,
      glance, glandular, grace, graze, groping, gut, gut reaction,
      hand-mindedness, handling, heartthrob, heat, heuristic, hint,
      humanity, humor, hunch, hunting, idea, identification, impression,
      imprint, indagative, inkling, input oscillation, inspectional,
      inspectorial, instinct, intensity, intimation, intuition,
      intuitional, intuitive, intuitive impression, investigational,
      investigative, investigatory, judgment, judiciousness, kindness,
      kiss, lambency, lap, leniency, lick, light touch, lights,
      making distinctions, manipulation, mental attitude, mercy, milieu,
      mind, mitigation, mood, mystique, niceness of distinction, nicety,
      note, notion, observation, of soul, offset, opinion,
      oscillatory behavior, outlook, overcorrection of error,
      overdemonstrative, overshoot, overtone, palate, palpability,
      palpation, pardon, passion, pathos, percept, perceptibility,
      perception, personal judgment, persuasion, petting, pity,
      point of view, popular belief, position, posture, preapprehension,
      precognitive, premonition, presentiment, pressure, presumption,
      prevailing belief, process, profound sense, psychology,
      public belief, public opinion, quality, quarter, reaction,
      refined discrimination, refined palate, refinement, regard, relief,
      reprieve, response, response to stimuli, responsiveness, rub,
      rubbing, ruth, second-sighted, selectiveness, self-excitation,
      self-pity, sensation, sense, sense impression, sense of touch,
      sense perception, sensibilities, sensibility, sensing, sensitive,
      sensitivity, sensory experience, sentient, sentiment, sight,
      soulful, spirit, stance, stroke, stroking, subtlety,
      susceptibilities, suspicion, sympathetic, sympathies, sympathy,
      tact, tactfulness, tactile sense, taction, tangibility, tap, taste,
      temper, tender, tenderness, tentative, tentative poke, testing,
      theory, thinking, thought, tone, touch, touching, trying,
      undercurrent, understanding, undertone, vague feeling, vague idea,
      vehemence, vein, view, visceral, warmth, way of thinking, whisper,
      zetetic