Intuition definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

View all »
Definitions (13)

American Heritage Dictionary (3)

noun The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; immediate cognition. See Synonyms at reason.
noun Knowledge gained by the use of this faculty; a perceptive insight.
noun A sense of something not evident or deducible; an impression.

Century Dictionary (7)

A looking on; a sight or view. His [Christ's] disciples must not only abstain from the act of unlawful concubinate, but from the impurer intuition of a wife of another man. Jer. Taylor, Works (ed. 1835), I. 215.
Direct or immediate cognition or perception; comprehension of ideas or truths independently of ratiocination; instinctive knowledge of the relations or consequences of ideas, facts, or actions. No doubt, with Philolaus the motion of the earth was only a guess, or, if you like, a happy intuition. Max Müller, Sci. of Lang., 1st ser., p. 29.
Specifically, in philosophy, an immediate cognition of an object as existent. The term intuition is not unambiguous. Besides its original and proper meaning (as a visual perception), it has been employed to denote a kind of apprehension, and a kind of judgment. Under the former head, intuition or intuitive knowledge has been used in the six following significations:—a.—To denote a perception of the actual and present, in opposition to the abstractive knowledge which we have of the possible in imagination and of the past in memory. b.—To denote an immediate apprehension of a thing in itself, in contrast to a representative, vicarious, or mediate apprehension of it, in or through something else. (Hence, by Fichte, Schelling, and others, Intuition is employed to designate the cognition as opposed to the conception of the Absolute.) c.—To denote the knowledge which we can adequately represent in imagination, in contradistinction to the symbolical knowledge which we cannot image, but only think or conceive, through and under a sign or word. (Hence, probably, Kant's application of the term to the forms of the sensibility—the imaginations of space and time—in contrast to the forms or categories of the understanding.) d.—To denote perception proper (the objective), in contrast to sensation proper (the subjective), in our sensitive consciousness. e.—To denote the simple apprehension of a notion, in contradistinction to the complex apprehension of the terms of a proposition. Under the latter head it has only a single signification, viz.: f.—To denote the immediate affirmation by the intellect, that the predicate does or does not pertain to the subject, in what are called self-evident propositions. All these meanings, however, with the exception of the fourth, have this in common, that they express the condition of an immediate in opposition to mediate knowledge. Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 759, note A, § 5. The term intuition will be taken as signifying a cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same object, and therefore so determined by something out of the consciousness. The word intuitus first occurs as a technical term in St. Anselm's Monologium. He wished to distinguish between our knowledge of God and our knowledge of finite things (and, in the next world, of God also); and, thinking of the saying of St. Paul, “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem,” he called the former speculation and the latter intuition. This use of “speculation” did not take root, because that word already had another exact and widely different signification. In the middle ages the term “intuitive cognition” had two principal senses: 1st, as opposed to abstractive cognition, it meant the knowledge of the present as present, and this is its meaning in Anselm; but, 2d, as no intuitive cognition was allowed to be determined by a previous cognition, it came to be used as the opposite of discursive cognition (see Scotus), and this is nearly the sense in which I employ it. C. S. Peirce.

4 more from this dictionary »

View all »
Examples (50)

Your intuition is a needle in a haystack, but at least it's there. — San Francisco Bay Guardian: Top Stories
Of course with all this the one question is as to whether such conceptions are true; but judged by intuition, which is the Roentgen ray of spirit--judged by the data reached by scholars and thinkers, by psychologists and scientists--it has no claim to recognition. — The Life Radiant
It was a lumping together of all five known human senses--and half a dozen unknown ones called, collectively, "intuition"--into one super-sense that was all-inclusive and all-informative. — Masters of Space
He was accustomed to act by intuition, not by logic, and his intuition was all against accepting MacDougall’s offer. — The Blood of the Conquerors
To define the scope and province of this intuition is the purport of Croce's epoch-making Aesthetics_, the basis and starting-point of his illumining work, in Critica_, as a literary critic. — Recent Developments in European Thought

More examples »

Add a related word »
Related

Used in the Same Context

insight · perception · tact · sensibility · inspiration · appreciation · instinct · faculty · comprehension · imagination · discernment · intellect

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English intuicioun, insight, from Late Latin intuitiō, intuitiōn-, a looking at, from Latin intuitus, a look, from past participle of intuērī, to look at, contemplate : in-, on; see in-² + tuērī, to look at.

Century Dictionary (1)

= French intuition = Spanish intuicion = Portuguese intuição = Italian intuizione, from Middle Latin intuitio(n-), a looking at, immediate cognition, from Latin intueri, look at, consider: see intuit.

intuition

View all »
Definitions (13)

American Heritage Dictionary (3)

Century Dictionary (7)

GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

WordNet (2)

Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

Tags

Stats

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Wordniks Suggest

Used in the Same Context

Word Family

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Century Dictionary (1)

Pronunciations
Record your own »

Charts

Recently looked up

Recent Favorites

Recent Pronunciations

intuition

View all » Definitions (13)

View all » Examples (50)

Tags

Stats

stop updating On Twitter

Photos from

Add a related word » Related

synonyms:

related word:

synonyms:

synonym:

Etymologies (2)

Pronunciations Record your own »

Charts

Recently looked up

Recent Favorites

Recent Pronunciations

View all »
Definitions (13)

View all »
Examples (50)

stop updating
On Twitter

Add a related word »
Related

Pronunciations
Record your own »