Senses definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (84)

American Heritage Dictionary (18)

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: a sense of fatigue and hunger.
noun The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.

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Century Dictionary (55)

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. Sense thinks the lightning born before the thunder: What tells us then they both together are? … Sense outsides knows, the soul through all things sees. Sir J. Davies, Immortal. of Soul, ii. We adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici, ii. 14. Wherever there is sense or perception, there some idea is actually produced, and present in the understanding. Locke, Human Understanding, II. ix. 4. These two doctrines of Leibnitz—that sense is confused thought, and that existence in space and time is a phenomenon reale—have a special importance when viewed in relation to the ideas of Kant. E. Caird, Philos. of Kant, p. 91. Errors of sense are only special instances where the mind makes its synthesis unfortunately, as it were, out of incomplete data, instantaneously and inevitably interpreting them in accordance with the laws which have regulated all its experience. G. T. Ladd, Physiol. Psychology, p. 455.
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. Whiles every sence the humour sweet embayd. Spenser, F. Q., I. ix. 13. The filly was soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it. Motteux, tr. of Rabelais, iv. 14. In June 'tis good to lie beneath a tree, While the blithe season comforts every sense. Lowell, Under the Willows. The five senses just enumerated—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—would seem to comprise all our perceptive faculties, and to leave no further sense to be explained. Aristotle, De Anima (tr. by Wallace).
Feeling; immediate consciousness; sensation perceived as inward or subjective, or, at least, not decidedly as objective; also, vague consciousness or feeling. Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words—health, peace, and competence. Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 79. A sense of pleasure, subtle and quiet as a perfume, diffused itself through the room. C. Brontë, Shirley, xxxv. Dim and faint May be the sense of pleasure and of pain. Bryant, Among the Trees. Such expressions as the abysmal vault of heaven, the endless expanse of ocean, &c., summarize many computations to the imagination, and give the sense of an enormous horizon. W. James, Mind, XII. 209, note. At the same time he [Manzoni] had that exquisite courtesy in listening which gave to those who addressed him the sense of having spoken well. Encyc. Brit., XV. 515. Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet Of bud and blossom. A. C. Swinburne, Two Dreams.

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But the author can not admit that the report of his senses is here mistaken A further embarrassment comes from the fact that this tone-embroidery found in the i'i is not a fixed quantity. — Unwritten Literature of Hawaii The Sacred Songs of the Hula
This usage makes my misery increase But can my air of life continue long When all my senses are annoy'd with stench Within a dungeon England's king is kept Where I am starv'd for want of sustenance My daily diet is heart-breaking sobs That almost rent the closet of my heart Thus lives old Edward not reliev'd by any And so must die, though pitied by many O, water, gentle friends, to cool my thirst And clear my body from foul excrements! — Edward the Second
The matter comes from without, the form from within; and the senses are the channels through which the phenomena of nature are poured into the mould of the human mind. — Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws
In the high tide of life that the bracing air had brought him, his senses were acute and true. — The Mermaid A Love Tale
But the most strongly affected of her senses was her hearing. — The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2

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