Definitions

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

  • noun The part or faculty of a person by which one feels, perceives, thinks, remembers, desires, and imagines.
  • noun A person of great mental ability.
  • noun Individual consciousness, memory, or recollection.
  • noun A person or group that embodies certain mental qualities.
  • noun The thought processes characteristic of a person or group; psychological makeup.
  • noun Opinion or sentiment.
  • noun Desire or inclination.
  • noun Focus of thought; attention.
  • noun A healthy mental state; sanity.
  • intransitive verb To pay attention to.
  • intransitive verb To be careful about.
  • intransitive verb To heed in order to obey.
  • intransitive verb To take care or charge of; look after: synonym: tend.
  • intransitive verb To be concerned or annoyed by; care.
  • intransitive verb To object to; dislike.
  • intransitive verb Regional To bring (an object or idea) to mind; remember.
  • intransitive verb To become aware of; notice.
  • intransitive verb Upper Southern US To have in mind as a goal or purpose; intend.
  • intransitive verb To take notice; give heed.
  • intransitive verb To behave obediently.
  • intransitive verb To be concerned or troubled; care.
  • intransitive verb To be cautious or careful.
  • idiom (a mind of (one's) own) A capacity or inclination to think or act independently.
  • idiom (a mind of its own) A tendency to be unresponsive to human will.
  • idiom (be of one mind) To be in agreement about something.
  • idiom (be of two minds) To have mixed feelings or be undecided about something.
  • idiom (bring/call) To remember (something).
  • idiom (bring/call) To cause (something) to be remembered or thought of; evoke.
  • idiom (never mind) Used to tell someone not to be concerned or worried.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A diadem: a name given to lunettes found in Ireland, commonly supposed to have been used as head-ornaments.
  • To call to mind; bear in mind; remember; recall.
  • To put in mind; remind.
  • To regard with attention; pay attention to; heed; notice.
  • To have the care of; attend to; specifically, to take or have the oversight of: as, a boy to mind the door.
  • To care for; be concerned about; be affected by.
  • To look out for; be watchful against.
  • To regard with submission; heed the commands of; obey: as, a headstrong child that will mind no one
  • In the Roman Catholic Church, to pray for. See a month's mind, under mind, n.
  • To intend; mean; purpose.
  • To remember.
  • To be inclined or disposed; design; intend.
  • To give heed; take note.
  • noun That which feels, wills, and thinks; the conscious subject; the ego; the soul.
  • noun The intellect, or cognitive faculty or part of the soul, as distinguished from feeling and volition; intelligence. The old psychologists made intellect and will the only faculties of the soul.
  • noun The field of consciousness; contemplation; thought; opinion.
  • noun Disposition; cast of thought and feeling; inclination; desire.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English minde, from Old English gemynd; see men- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English minde, munde, ȝemunde, from Old English mynd, ġemynd ("memory, remembrance; memorial, record; act of commemoration; thought, purpose; consciousness, mind, intellect"), from Proto-Germanic *mundiz, *gamundiz (“memory, remembrance”), from Proto-Indo-European *méntis (“thought”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”). Cognate with Old High German gimunt ("mind, memory"), Danish minde ("memory"), Icelandic minni ("memory, recall, recollection"), Gothic 𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌳𐍃 (munds, "memory, mind"), Old English myntan ("to mean, intend, purpose, determine, resolve"), Latin mēns ("mind, reason"), Albanian mënd ("mind, reason"). More at mint.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word mind.

Examples

  • _Mental_ resistance can be met and overcome by _ideas_, by points introduced by _your_ mind into the _mind_ of the _other_ man.

    Certain Success Norval A. Hawkins

  • Likewise if anything happens to a particular set of muscles, the reaction is instantly transmitted to its associated mind center through the "direct wire" nerves and brain center which particularly serve that part of the mind_.

    Certain Success Norval A. Hawkins

  • The real and practical alliance between the physical and the psychic -- between body and mind -- is better realized; as for instance: You may be seized with _an idea_, or a passion, and it disturbs your _health of body_; you may take indigestible food, or suffer injury or fatigue, and it disturbs your _health of mind_.

    Valere Aude Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration Louis Dechmann

  • The attraction of mechanical power had already wrenched the American mind into a crab-like process which Roosevelt was making heroic efforts to restore to even action, and he had every right to active support and sympathy from all the world, especially from the Trusts themselves so far as they were human; but the doubt persisted whether the force that educated was really man or nature, —mind or motion.

    Nunc Age (1905) 1918

  • What General Meade wrote in May, “We must expect disaster so long as the armies are not under one master mind, ”32 Lincoln knew perfectly well, and gladly would he have devolved the military conduct of affairs on one man could he have found that “master mind” for whom he made a painful quest during almost two years.

    Chapter IV 1917

  • To meet the demand for a final and standard truth, a demand which realism meets with its doctrine of a being independent of any mind, this philosophy defines a _standard mind_.

    The Approach to Philosophy Ralph Barton Perry 1916

  • And, of course, a man _must_ sometimes change both his clothes and his mind -- his _mind_ at any rate.

    Mushrooms on the Moor Frank Boreham 1915

  • Science itself very likely establishes a presumption in favor of a governing mind, _but the deeper question is as to the character of that mind_.

    Understanding the Scriptures Francis John McConnell 1912

  • But the idea must be constantly in the mind of the mother that her boy needs to _see_ the spoken word at the very moment _when the idea that it represents is in his mind_, AS OFTEN as he would hear it if his hearing were perfect.

    What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know John Dutton Wright 1909

  • Columbus discovered America some four hundred years ago, that your house is of a white color, that it rained a week ago today, exists as a fact regardless of whether your minds think of these things at all, yet the truth remains as before: for the particular mind which remembers these things, _the facts did not exist while they were out of the mind_.

    The Mind and Its Education George Herbert Betts 1901

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The mind is its own place, and in it self

    Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

    Milton, Paradise Lost, I

    December 17, 2006

  • A contronym in the sense of: obey vs. wayward i.e., 'mind of her own'.

    January 6, 2007

  • The moon orbits the Earth; the Earth orbits the sun; the sun orbits the galactic hub…what does the mind orbit? The mind is a double star orbiting a Singularity: a black hole. Thoughts are its event horizon; spoken words, its comet tail; the line of the penned word, a drifting contrail. The Double Star: I and Not-I. The Black Hole?: Who, What, Where, When, Why….but especially WHO AM I ???

    The mind whispers to itself. It tells itself what it knows. It tells itself Religion, it tells itself Science; it tells itself Mathematics and Philosophy. It narrates unto its own ears, and thereby sustains its path above the Black Hole; ever-accelerating—out and away. But how does the speeding bullet strike itself, when it’s the only goal? How the gurgling infant decree and design its selfsame birth? For here is the mystery of the bottomless Black Hole: WHO AM I ???

    In Einstein’s Curved Cosmos, the omnipatetic pursuer discovers only the ebon space behind its eyes—the fleeting, receding shadow of its own headlong rush: the presence of absence. Yet that movement is the conjuration of the panoply and play of all phenomena and perception. So the mind whispers, constantly, what it thinks it knows, and can know only what it thinks—and is thereby helplessly ensnared in a web of its own spinning. The kitten chases its tail, and has amusement enough for a time. But the mystery remains, for those unavoidably fascinated: WHO AM I ???

    February 11, 2007

  • Once upon a fine time, when all of the little animals were busy in other parables, a man decided to sit down and "write a letter to his own brain." Well, he did so and sent it off, but within a few days it was returned unopened, with a message on the envelope that said, "You should address me as your 'MIND,' NOT your 'brain.'" And he decided not to even waste his time ever trying to correspond with his large intestines and related areas. --Jan Cox

    April 6, 2007

  • 'the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.' -e.e. cummings

    February 19, 2008

  • I imagine most of you have seen this, but it's still fascinating:

    "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

    My tpniyg otefn lkoos tihs way, but I sspcuet taht smtnihoeg esle is at wrok in my csae.

    October 11, 2008

  • Sikpiva, tath's llveoy. :)

    October 11, 2008

  • I'ev raed aubot taht, sikp. Cperey.

    October 14, 2008