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Sense   /sɛns/   Listen
noun
Sense  n.  
1.
(Physiol.) A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. See Muscular sense, under Muscular, and Temperature sense, under Temperature. "Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep." "What surmounts the reach Of human sense I shall delineate." "The traitor Sense recalls The soaring soul from rest."
2.
Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling. "In a living creature, though never so great, the sense and the affects of any one part of the body instantly make a transcursion through the whole."
3.
Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation. "This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover." "High disdain from sense of injured merit."
4.
Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning. "He speaks sense." "He raves; his words are loose As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense."
5.
That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion. "I speak my private but impartial sense With freedom." "The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens."
6.
Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a remark. "So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense." "I think 't was in another sense."
7.
Moral perception or appreciation. "Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no sense of the most friendly offices."
8.
(Geom.) One of two opposite directions in which a line, surface, or volume, may be supposed to be described by the motion of a point, line, or surface.
Common sense, according to Sir W. Hamilton:
(a)
"The complement of those cognitions or convictions which we receive from nature, which all men possess in common, and by which they test the truth of knowledge and the morality of actions."
(b)
"The faculty of first principles." These two are the philosophical significations.
(c)
"Such ordinary complement of intelligence, that,if a person be deficient therein, he is accounted mad or foolish."
(d)
When the substantive is emphasized: "Native practical intelligence, natural prudence, mother wit, tact in behavior, acuteness in the observation of character, in contrast to habits of acquired learning or of speculation."
Moral sense. See under Moral, (a).
The inner sense, or The internal sense, capacity of the mind to be aware of its own states; consciousness; reflection. "This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense."
Sense capsule (Anat.), one of the cartilaginous or bony cavities which inclose, more or less completely, the organs of smell, sight, and hearing.
Sense organ (Physiol.), a specially irritable mechanism by which some one natural force or form of energy is enabled to excite sensory nerves; as the eye, ear, an end bulb or tactile corpuscle, etc.
Sense organule (Anat.), one of the modified epithelial cells in or near which the fibers of the sensory nerves terminate.
Synonyms: Understanding; reason. Sense, Understanding, Reason. Some philosophers have given a technical signification to these terms, which may here be stated. Sense is the mind's acting in the direct cognition either of material objects or of its own mental states. In the first case it is called the outer, in the second the inner, sense. Understanding is the logical faculty, i. e., the power of apprehending under general conceptions, or the power of classifying, arranging, and making deductions. Reason is the power of apprehending those first or fundamental truths or principles which are the conditions of all real and scientific knowledge, and which control the mind in all its processes of investigation and deduction. These distinctions are given, not as established, but simply because they often occur in writers of the present day.


verb
Sense  v. t.  (past & past part. sensed; pres. part. sensing)  To perceive by the senses; to recognize. (Obs. or Colloq.) "Is he sure that objects are not otherwise sensed by others than they are by him?"





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Sense" Quotes from Famous Books



... fascinated George and he could never keep away from them—and there was in his face the whimsical and appealing naughtiness of a child. Suddenly Gabriella felt that as far as character and experience counted, she was immeasurably older than George. Her superior common sense made her feel almost middle-aged when he was in one of his boyish moods. At the age of nine she had not been so utterly irresponsible as George was at twenty-six; as an infant in arms she had probably regarded the universe with a profounder ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... manufacture of coins. There was no doubt that she was one of the gang also, but Jennings could not conceive why she should take to such a business. However, the woman was dead and the gang captured, so the detective moved along the narrow passage with a sense of triumph. He never thought that he would be so lucky as to make this discovery, and he knew well that such a triumph meant praise and reward. "I'll be able to marry Peggy ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... in regard to these things; above all, if we could hear the shrieks of the perishing, the sobs and thanksgivings of the rescued, and the wild cheers of the rescuers; and hear and see all this at one single glance, so that our hearts might be more filled than they are at present with a sense of the terrible dangers of our shores, and the heroism of our men of the coast, it is probable that our prayers for those who "go down to the sea in ships" would be more frequent and fervent, and our respect for those who risk life and limb to save the shipwrecked would be deeper. It is also ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... virtue there is under their skins. Virtue of the lower orders! Tell that to gentlefolks that don't know them. I do. I've been one of 'em—'I know all about that,' says I. 'You want to share the plunder, that is the sense of your virtuous cry.' So I had 'em up here; and then there was no more virtuous howling, but a deal of virtuous thieving, and modest drinking, and pure-minded selling of my street-door to the highest male bidder. And they will corrupt the boy; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... of a man; to say nothing of the higher and religious side of this question? While then there is much that my carnal self-indulgent nature does not at all like, and while it is always trying to rebel, my better sense and the true voice within tells me that, independently of this particular work requiring such a discipline, the discipline itself is good for the formation of my own character. ...Oh! the month of June ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge


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