sense

Meanings

Noun

• Any of the manners by which living beings perceive the physical world: for humans sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste.
• Perception through the intellect; apprehension; awareness.
• Sound practical or moral judgment.
• The meaning, reason, or value of something.
• A natural appreciation or ability.
• The way that a referent is presented.
• A single conventional use of a word; one of the entries for a word in a dictionary.
• One of two opposite directions in which a vector (especially of motion) may point. See also polarity.
• One of two opposite directions of rotation, clockwise versus anti-clockwise.
• referring to the strand of a nucleic acid that directly specifies the product.

Verb

• To use biological senses: to either see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.
• To instinctively be aware.
• To comprehend.

Related

Similar words

• nonnonsense

Narrower meaning words

• business sense
• common sense
• fashion sense
• sense of humor
• sense of humour
• sixth sense
• transferred sense

Origin

• From Middle English sense, borrowed from Old French sens, sen, san ("sense, reason, direction"); partly from Latin sensus ("sensation, feeling, meaning"), from sentiō; partly of Germanic origin (whence also Occitan sen, Italian senno), from Vulgar Latin *sennus ("sense, reason, way"), from Frankish *sinn ("reason, judgement, mental faculty, way, direction"). Both Latin and Germanic from Proto-Indo-European *sent- ("to feel").