Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having sense perception; conscious: "The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage” ( T.E. Lawrence).
- adj. Experiencing sensation or feeling.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Capable of sensation or of sense-perception; having the power of feeling.
- Characterized by the exercise of sense or sense-perception.
- In physiology, noting those parts which on stimulation give rise to sensation.
- Synonyms Sensitive, etc. See sensible.
- n. The mind as capable of feeling.
Wiktionary
- adj. Conscious or self-aware.
- adj. Experiencing sensation, thinking, thought, or feeling.
- adj. Possessing human-like knowledge and intelligence.
- n. Lifeform with the capability to feel sensation, such as pain.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Physiol.) Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception. especially sensitive.
- n. One who has the faculty of perception; a sentient being.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness
- adj. consciously perceiving
Etymologies
- From Latin sentīens ("feeling, perceiving"), present active participle of sentiō. (Wiktionary)
- Latin sentiēns, sentient-, present participle of sentīre, to feel; see sent- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“On Kierkegaard's religious views, Sartre offers the usual argument against existence of God: If existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect.”
“Of course it is circular in the sense that, based on my proffered definition, since intelligence ultimately permeates all aspects of being, what we call sentient beings (life forms) are simply different manifestations of intelligence playing with itself, or as one old text puts it in the title: 'You are the Eyes of the Universe.”
“But I am curious to know, Ron, how long human heads remain sentient after they have been severed.”
“Being aware that Bush and his bunch are barely sentient is not being against America, it is being for what is used to stand for.”
“I call sentient beings out of the blessed gulf of nothingness, that they may pay a duty to my weakness by and by, and curse me in their hearts?”
“The impact of what is sometimes called the sentient city is not just at a city level but it also impacts communities, neighborhoods and families.”
“Rational, reasonable = maybe I should say "sentient" - people do change their minds.”
Rudy Digs In: Roe V. Wade "Not Something That I Would Seek To Change."
“[cont. below] p. Contractile earths in sentient forms arrange,”
“And the notion of sentient beings is from science as much as it is religion.”
“You will be classified as a sentient hive, a community. —
365 tomorrows » 2006 » April : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sentient’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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important
shamanism, consol, sanguine, iffy, affinity, concatenation, honed, innumberable, aiden, inexorable, vet, suss and 176 more...
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...health, follow, condition, meeting, minister, beginning, chapter, information, language, remain, covered, respect and 2614 more...
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Quacksalvers et al. Nostrum
Bring forth the cathartic illumination on malignant,maniacal,medical,menage a trios and more egotists stymie
culpability, piousfraud, capacitous, rhabdomyolysis, scapula, idiosyncrasy, quiescent, malignant, nefarious, sociological, sociopath, pathogen and 204 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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phil vocab 3
genocide, superfluous, warfare, indissoluble, sentient, confound, pernicious, dispose, render, amiable, paradox, puritanical and 36 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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JesusIsLord's Words
debauchery, plethora, wiki, numinous, wormwood, scribe, gelded, mithridate, orthogonal, jaculiferous, jaculate, jactitation and 415 more...
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Angels and Demons Word list
behemoth, disquietude, exalted, heretical, schlock, delirium, precipice, infallible, fathom, fervent, cavern, ardent and 35 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Consider the Lobster
By David Foster Wallace
percussive, discursive, lugubrious, docent, assiduously, berm, wag, bonmot, imbroglio, telegraph, fissile, rube and 220 more...
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Smart yet Understandable
Working on expanding my vocabulary, and looking for interesting yet understandable words that have the ability to wow.
superfluous, sardonic, sentient, complacent, facetious, flippant
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sentient.
champagnesque I am sentient, but a rock is not. Nov 13, 2007
john "'I count this as the day Wordie became sentient,' Mr. McGrath says. 'I love seeing people bend a system to their own purposes.'"
- me, in the frickin' Wall Street Journal Online. Ha!
Dec 27, 2006