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sense       (sěns)  Pronunciation Key  n.   Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body are received and felt, as the faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, and equilibrium. A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation: a sense of fatigue and hunger. An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate: a sense of diplomatic timing. A capacity to appreciate or understand: a keen sense of humor. A vague feeling or presentiment: a sense of impending doom. Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness: has no sense of shame. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses? Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues. senses The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure. An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate: a sense of diplomatic timing. A capacity to appreciate or understand: a keen sense of humor. A vague feeling or presentiment: a sense of impending doom. Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness: has no sense of shame. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses? Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses? Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues. tr.v.   sensed, sens·ing, sens·es To become aware of; perceive. To grasp; understand. To detect automatically: sense radioactivity. adj.   Genetics Of or relating to the portion of the strand of double-stranded DNA that serves as a template for and is transcribed into RNA. [Middle English, meaning, from Old French sens, from Latin sēnsus, the faculty of perceiving, from past participle of sentīre, to feel; see sent- in Indo-European roots.]

Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
sense  (n.)

WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

sense
noun
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"
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"
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]
5.	a natural appreciation or ability; "a keen musical sense"; "a good sense of timing"
verb
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]
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]
4.	comprehend; "I sensed the real meaning of his letter"

American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms - Cite This Source - Share This

sense

see come to one's senses; horse sense; in a sense; lull into (a false sense of security); make sense; sixth sense; take leave of (one's senses); talk sense.

American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

sense (sěns)
n.

1. Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body are received and felt, as the faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, and equilibrium.
2. A perception or feeling that is produced by a stimulus; sensation, as of hunger.

v. sensed, sens·ing, sens·es
To become aware of; perceive.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

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.

Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep. --Shak.

What surmounts the reach Of human sense I shall delineate. --Milton.

The traitor Sense recalls The soaring soul from rest. --Keble.

2. Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling.

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.

3. Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation.

This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover. --Sir P. Sidney.

High disdain from sense of injured merit. --Milton.

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.

He raves; his words are loose As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense. --Dryden.

5. That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.

I speak my private but impartial sense With freedom. --Roscommon.

The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. --Macaulay.

6. Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a remark.

So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense. --Neh. viii. 8.

I think 't was in another sense. --Shak.

7. Moral perception or appreciation.

Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no sense of the most friendly offices. --L' Estrange.

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.

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, or 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.

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.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

Sense

Sense\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sensed; p. pr. & vb. n. Sensing.] To perceive by the senses; to recognize. [Obs. or Colloq.]

Is he sure that objects are not otherwise sensed by others than they are by him? --Glanvill.