sense

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. 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.
2. n. A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation: a sense of fatigue and hunger.
3. n. The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.
4. n. An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate: a sense of diplomatic timing.
5. n. A capacity to appreciate or understand: a keen sense of humor.
6. n. A vague feeling or presentiment: a sense of impending doom.
7. n. Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness: has no sense of shame.
8. n. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost.
9. n. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses?
10. n. Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours.
11. n. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy.
12. n. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning.
13. n. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment.
14. n. 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.
15. v. To become aware of; perceive.
16. v. To grasp; understand.
17. v. To detect automatically: sense radioactivity.
18. 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.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. 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.
2. n. A special faculty of sensation connected with a bodily organ; the mode of sensation awakened by the excitation of a peripheral nerve. In this signification, man is commonly said to have five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—a correct enumeration, perhaps, according to organs, but each of these organs has several different qualities of sensation. A sixth sense is often specified as the muscular sense (distinguished from touch); a seventh is sometimes spoken of, meaning the inner sense, the common sense of Aristotle, an unknown endowment, or a sexual feeling; and further subdivisions also are made. The seven senses are also often spoken of, meaning consciousness in its totality.
3. n. Feeling; immediate consciousness; sensation perceived as inward or subjective, or, at least, not decidedly as objective; also, vague consciousness or feeling.
4. n. 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.
5. n. Mind generally; consciousness; especially, understanding; cognitive power.
6. n. Sound or clear mind. Ordinary, normal, or clear mental action: especially in the plural, with a collective force.
7. n. Good judgment approaching sagacity; sound practical intelligence.
8. n. Acuteness of perception or apprehension; discernment.
9. n. Discriminative perception; appreciation; a state of mind the result of a mental judgment or valuation.
10. n. Meaning; import; signification; the conception that a word or sign is intended to convey.
11. n. 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.
12. n. That which is wise, judicious, sound, sensible, or intelligent, and accords with sound reason: as, to talk sense.
13. [= Dan. sandse, perceive, = Sw. sansa (refi.), recover oneself; from the noun.]
14. To perceive by the senses.
15. To give the sense of; expound.
16. To perceive; comprehend; understand; realize; take into the mind.
17. Same as incense.
18. n. In geometry, one of two directly opposite ways in which a construct may be generated, described, or thought.
19. n. 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.
20. n. 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.

Wiktionary

1. n. One of the methods for a living being to gather data about the world; sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste.
2. n. A general conscious awareness.
3. n. Sound practical judgment, as in common sense.
4. n. The meaning, reason, or value of something.
5. n. A natural appreciation or ability.
6. n. pragmatics The way that a referent is presented.
7. n. semantics A single conventional use of a word; one of the entries for a word in a dictionary.
8. n. mathematics One of two opposite directions in which a vector (especially of motion) may point. See also polarity.
9. n. mathematics One of two opposite directions of rotation, clockwise versus anti-clockwise.
10. v. To use biological senses: to either smell, watch, taste, hear or feel.
11. v. To instinctively be aware.
12. v. To comprehend.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (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.
2. n. Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling.
3. n. Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation.
4. n. Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning.
5. n. That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.
6. n. Meaning; import; signification.
7. n. Moral perception or appreciation.
8. n. (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.
9. v. Obs. or Colloq. To perceive by the senses; to recognize.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. comprehend.
2. n. a natural appreciation or ability
3. n. sound practical judgment
4. v. become aware of not through the senses but instinctively
5. n. a general conscious awareness
6. v. detect some circumstance or entity automatically
7. n. the faculty through which the external world is apprehended
8. v. perceive by a physical sensation, e.g., coming from the skin or muscles
9. n. the meaning of a word or expression; the way in which a word or expression or situation can be interpreted