Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun 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.
  • noun A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation.
  • noun The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.
  • noun An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate.
  • noun A capacity to appreciate or understand.
  • noun A vague feeling or presentiment.
  • noun Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness.
  • noun Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters.
  • noun The normal ability to think or reason soundly.
  • noun Something sound or reasonable.
  • noun A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification.
  • noun One of the meanings of a word or phrase.
  • noun Judgment; consensus.
  • noun Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group.
  • transitive verb To become aware of; perceive.
  • transitive verb To grasp; understand.
  • transitive verb To detect automatically.
  • adjective 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.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • [= Dan. sandse, perceive, = Sw. sansa (refi.), recover oneself; from the noun.]
  • To perceive by the senses.
  • To give the sense of; expound.
  • To perceive; comprehend; understand; realize; take into the mind.
  • noun In geometry, one of two directly opposite ways in which a construct may be generated, described, or thought.
  • noun The simplest type of concrete affective experience; a complex of a sensation (or a well-defined group of sensations) and an affective process: such a feeling as hunger, or drowsiness: opposed to emotion and sentiment.
  • noun Specifically, the sense whose organ is the semicircular canals and vestibule of the internal ear, the portion of the internal ear supplied by the vestibular branch of the acoustic nerve. For the most part, this organ appears to function refiexly, that is, is not an organ of sense; but it undoubtedly gives us the sensation of dizziness or giddiness, and some authors refer this sensation to the ampullæ of the canals, and ascribe to the vestibule a second sensation, that of pressure.
  • Same as incense.
  • noun The capacity of being the subject of sensation and perception; the mode of consciousness by which an object is apprehended which acts upon the mind through the senses; the capacity of becoming conscious of objects as actually now and here; sense-perception; mental activity directly concerned in sensations.
  • noun A special faculty of sensation connected with a bodily organ; the mode of sensation awakened by the excitation of a peripheral nerve.
  • noun Feeling; immediate consciousness; sensation perceived as inward or subjective, or, at least, not decidedly as objective; also, vague consciousness or feeling.
  • noun A power of perceiving relations of a particular kind; a capacity of being affected by certain non-sensuous qualities of objects; a special kind of discernment; also, an exertion of such a power: as, the religious sense; the sense of duty; the sense of humor.
  • noun Mind generally; consciousness; especially, understanding; cognitive power.
  • noun Sound or clear mind.
  • noun Good judgment approaching sagacity; sound practical intelligence.
  • noun Acuteness of perception or apprehension; discernment.
  • noun Discriminative perception; appreciation; a state of mind the result of a mental judgment or valuation.
  • noun Meaning; import; signification; the conception that a word or sign is intended to convey.
  • noun The intention, thought, feeling, or meaning of a body of persons, as an assembly; judgment, opinion, determination, or will in reference to a debated question.
  • noun That which is wise, judicious, sound, sensible, or intelligent, and accords with sound reason: as, to talk sense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb Obs. or Colloq. To perceive by the senses; to recognize.
  • noun (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. See Muscular sense, under muscular, and Temperature sense, under temperature.
  • noun Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling.
  • noun Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation.
  • noun Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning.
  • noun That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.
  • noun Meaning; import; signification.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[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.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English sense, from Old French sens, sen, san ("sense, reason, direction"); partly from Latin sensus ("sensation, feeling, meaning"), from sentiō ("feel, perceive"); partly of Germanic origin (whence also Occitan sen, Italian senno), from Frankish *sinn ("reason, judgement, mental faculty, way, direction"), from Proto-Germanic *sinnaz (“mind, meaning”). Both Latin and Germanic from Proto-Indo-European *sent- (“to feel”). Compare French assener ("to thrust out"), forcené ("maniac"). More at send.

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Examples

  • If we had a sixth sense, what a _new sense_ it would be!

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 3, 1891 Various

  • Its _logical_ structure is very different, however, from that of sense: _sense_ gives acquaintance with particulars, and is thus a two-term relation in which the object can be _named_ but not

    Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays Bertrand Russell 1921

  • By Father Nicholai Velimirovic, Ph.D. "Nature _takes sufficient care of our individualistic sense, leaving to_ Education _the care of our panhumanistic sense_."

    The New Ideal in Education Nikolai Velimirovi�� 1918

  • The sense of Melody and Tune lies behind the brow in connection with the _sense of hearing_, at the anterior portion of Sensibility, which forty years after my discovery is beginning to be recognized in consequence of the experiments of

    Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 Volume 1, Number 9 1856

  • In the latter sense, it imports much more than this; it is not merely a _sense_ of doubt respecting any one truth, but a _system_ of doubt in regard to the grounds of our belief in all truth, a subtle philosophy which seeks to explain the phenomena of Belief by resolving them into their ultimate principles, and which often terminates -- in explaining them away.

    Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws James Buchanan 1837

  • That the words [sic] mass is used in its appropriate specific sense in this Article, and not as synonymous with Lord's Supper, or eucharist, as the Plea for the Augsburg Confession [Note 33] asserts, is proved by the fact, that _if you substitute either of these words for it, many passages in the Article will not make sense_.

    American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics Including a Reply to the Plea of Rev. W. J. Mann 1836

  • Creator has given to his creatures, have cultivated only one, the sense of touch, -- leaving out entirely that chief sense, which connects and confirms all others, -- _the sense of the invisible_, the _moral sense_.

    Atheism Among the People Alphonse de Lamartine 1829

  • Good sense is so far from deserving the appellation of _common sense_, by which it is frequently called, that it is perhaps one of the rarest qualities of the human mind.

    Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies Hannah More 1789

  • The sense-strand-specific (sense) primer, from +243 to +223; antisense-strand-specific (AS), from − 16 to +5; sense*, from +415 to +395; and AS*, from − 68 to − 48.

    PLoS Biology: New Articles 2009

  • The boxes below the bar indicate the positions of the strand-specific primers used for the detection of dsRNA: the blank boxes are sense-strand-specific primers (sense, +243 to +223, and sense*, +415 to +395), and the black ones are primers for the AS strand (AS, − 16 to +5, and AS*, − 68 to − 48).

    PLoS Biology: New Articles 2009

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