Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The memories or feelings that are not part of one's immediate awareness but that can be recalled through conscious effort.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or involving a state anterior to consciousness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a state before consciousness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective psychology (of memories) that one is not aware of, but can be recalled through
conscious effort - noun psychology The sum of these memories
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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We do know that the formation of conscience and the formation of various types of behavior come in what we call a preconscious level.
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He predictably avoids the language of the subconscious; but his 'preconscious' in fact works in much the same way.
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Slowly he probed through the vacant conscious levels of her mind to the turbulent preconscious, heavily hung with obscuring clouds like a vast dark nebula in the heavens.
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He went down past the conscious level to the preconscious.
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Or it might be that a culture would arise on this planet flourish briefly in the innocent belief that the universe revolved around it, and then sink back once more into the dim twilight of preconscious thought, rejoining the animal kingdom from which it had emerged.
Tin 2010
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The 1sts are capable of deep peeping, through the conscious and preconscious layers down to the unconscious ... the lowest levels of the mind.
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For me, intuition is a preconscious or perhaps subconscious knowing.
Flag That Head James Gurney 2010
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Deep in the preconscious she answered: "Who is that?"
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I suppose it might be argued that somewhere in my preconscious there is a linguistic representation of what I am at first unable to verbalise, and that my little eureka experience so delightful that it makes the struggle seem worthwhile is only a recognition that the words in my consciousness now accord perfectly with those in my preconscious.
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Maritain places this knowledge at the level of the preconscious intellect.
Jacques Maritain Sweet, William 2008
mutandis26 commented on the word preconscious
What can I say, I like it. This should be for that split-second just before you wake up, or come to - say, after a monumental binge.
August 31, 2009