experience

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind: a child's first experience of snow.
2. n. Active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill: a lesson taught by experience; a carpenter with experience in roof repair.
3. n. The knowledge or skill so derived.
4. n. An event or a series of events participated in or lived through.
5. n. The totality of such events in the past of an individual or group.
6. v. To participate in personally; undergo: experience a great adventure; experienced loneliness.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The state or fact of having made trial or proof, or of having acquired knowledge, wisdom, skill, etc., by actual trial or observation; also, the knowledge so acquired; personal and practical acquaintance with anything; experimental cognition or perception: as, he knows what suffering is by long experience; experience teaches even fools.
2. n. In philosophy, knowledge acquired through external or internal perception; also, the totality of the cognitions given by perception, taken in their connection; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered. Locke defines it as our observation, employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected upon by ourselves. The Latin experientia was used in its philosophical sense by Celsus and others, and in the middle ages by Roger Bacon. It translates the Greek ἐμπειρία of the Stoics. See empiric.
3. n. Specifically That which has been learned, suffered, or done, considered as productive of practical judgment and skill; the sum of practical wisdom taught by all the events, vicissitudes, and observations of one's life, or by any particular class or division of them.
4. n. An individual or particular instance of trial or observation.
5. n. An experiment.
6. n. A fixed mental impression or emotion; specifically, a guiding or controlling religious feeling, as at the time of conversion or resulting from subsequent influences.
7. n. Synonyms Experience, Experiment, Observation. Experience is strictly that which befalls a man, or which he goes through, while experiment is that which one actively undertakes. Observation is looking on, without necessarily having any connection with the matter: it is one thing to know of a man's goodness or of the horrors of war by observation, and quite another to know of it or them by experience. To know of a man's goodness by experiment would be to have put it to actual and intentional test. Bee practice.
8. To learn by practical trial or proof; try or prove by use, by suffering, or by enjoyment; have happen to or befall one; acquire a perception of; undergo: as, we all experience pain, sorrow, and pleasure; we experience good and evil; we often experience a change of sentiments and views, or pleasurable or painful sensations.
9. To practise or drill; exercise.

Wiktionary

1. n. Event(s) of which one is cognizant.
2. n. Activity which one has performed.
3. n. Collection of events and/or activities from which an individual or group may gather knowledge, opinions, and skills.
4. n. The knowledge thus gathered.
5. v. : To observe certain events; undergo a certain feeling or process; or perform certain actions that may alter one or contribute to one's knowledge, opinions, or skills.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Trial, as a test or experiment.
2. n. The effect upon the judgment or feelings produced by any event, whether witnessed or participated in; personal and direct impressions as contrasted with description or fancies; personal acquaintance; actual enjoyment or suffering.
3. n. An act of knowledge, one or more, by which single facts or general truths are ascertained; experimental or inductive knowledge; hence, implying skill, facility, or practical wisdom gained by personal knowledge, feeling or action.
4. v. To make practical acquaintance with; to try personally; to prove by use or trial; to have trial of; to have the lot or fortune of; to have befall one; to be affected by; to feel
5. v. To exercise; to train by practice.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. undergo.
2. v. go or live through
3. v. undergo an emotional sensation or be in a particular state of mind
4. v. have firsthand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or sensations
5. v. go through (mental or physical states or experiences)
6. n. the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities
7. n. an event as apprehended
8. n. the content of direct observation or participation in an event