intuition

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A looking on; a sight or view.
2. n. 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.
3. n. Specifically, in philosophy, an immediate cognition of an object as existent.
4. n. [Some writers hold that the German Anschauung should not be translated by intuition. But this term is a part of the Kantian terminology, the whole of which was framed in Latin and translated into German, and this word in particular was used by Kant in his Latin writings in the form intuitus, and he frequently brackets this form after Anschauung, to make his meaning clear. Besides, the cognitio intuitiva of Scotus, who anticipated some of Kant's most important views on this subject, is almost identical with Kant's own definition of Anschauung. Intellectual intuition, used since Kant for an immediate cognition of the existence of God, was by the German mystics employed for their spiritual illumination (the term intuitio intellectualis was borrowed by them from Cardinal de Cusa), or light of nature.]
5. n. Any object or truth discerned by direct cognition; a first or primary truth; a truth that cannot be acquired by but is assumed in experience.
6. n. Pure, untaught knowledge.

Wiktionary

1. n. Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes.
2. n. A perceptive insight gained by the use of this faculty.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. obsolete A looking after; a regard to.
2. n. Direct apprehension or cognition; immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness; -- distinguished from “mediate” knowledge, as in reasoning; ; quick or ready insight or apprehension.
3. n. Any object or truth discerned by intuition.
4. n. Any quick insight, recognized immediately without a reasoning process; a belief arrived at unconsciously; -- often it is based on extensive experience of a subject.
5. n. The ability to have insight into a matter without conscious thought.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes)
2. n. an impression that something might be the case