Definitions

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

  • noun A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling.
  • noun Such mental states or the qualities that are associated with them, especially in contrast to reason.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Excited or unusual motion; disturbed movement.
  • noun An agitated or aroused, and usually distinctly pleasurable or painful, state of mind directed toward some object; technically, a sensation excited by an idea and directed toward an object, and accompanied by some bodily commotion, such as blushing, trembling, weeping, or some slighter disturbance not manifest to a second party.
  • noun Synonyms Trepidation, Tremor, etc. See agnitation.

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

  • noun A moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data.
  • noun A reaction by an non-human organism with behavioral and physiological elements similar to a person's response.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any strong feeling

Etymologies

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

[French émotion, from Old French, from esmovoir, to excite, from Vulgar Latin *exmovēre : Latin ex-, ex- + Latin movēre, to move; see meuə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French émotion, from émouvoir ("excite") based on Latin emotus, past participle of emovere ("to move out, move away, remove, stir up, agitate"), from e- ("out") (variant of ex-), and movere ("move").

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Examples

  • Consequently, what are here labeled “emotion views” are divided into those that understand love to be a particular kind of evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object, whether that response is merely occurrent or dispositional (˜emotions proper,™ see Section 5.1, below), and those that understand love to involve a collection of related and interconnected emotions proper (˜emotion complexes,™ see Section 5.2, below).

    Love Helm, Bennett 2009

  • QUOTATION: Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, —emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

    Quotations 1919

  • The emotion of love, just because it is an _emotion_, is the emotion of a personality.

    The Complex Vision John Cowper Powys 1917

  • But it was of no use; she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet, —emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance.

    VII. Philip Re-enters. Book VI—The Great Temptation 1917

  • 7374Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, —emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

    Quotations 1919

  • 91Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, —emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

    Quotations 1919

  • After the main emotion is named, further exploration into other times the artist has felt these specific emotions in a strong manner.

    Stanislavskis method within Writing « Write Anything 2010

  • Clearly frazzled by the Wizards 'burst and the sudden rise in emotion from the crowd of 11,591, the Sonics looked disoriented on the other end.

    National Basketball Association - Sonics vs. Wizards 2001

  • He also does the quick happy care-free vs dark angst changes in emotion, which is what I would see required for a young Bilbo, and he'd totally nail it.

    I'm not sure how I feel about this rabid1st 2009

  • All the emotion is the reason NM is my favorite book.

    Twilight Lexicon » New Moon Cast News 2009

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