feeling

feeling n

1 sensibility, *sensation, sense

Analogous words: reacting or reaction, behaving or behavior (see corresponding verbs at ACT): responsiveness (see corresponding adjective at TENDER): sensitiveness, susceptibility (see corresponding adjectives at LIABLE)

2 Feeling, affection, emotion, sentiment, passion.

Feeling, the general term, denotes a partly mental and partly physical, but not primarily sensory, reaction or state that is characterized by an emotional response (as pleasure, pain, attraction, or repulsion). Unless it is qualified or a clue is given in the context, feeling gives no indication of the nature, the quality, or the intensity of the response (whateverfeelings were in Sophia's heart, tenderness was not among them— Bennett)

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a feeling of sadness and longing— Longfellow

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Often feeling implies a contrast with judgment and connotes lack of thought

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her humanity was a feeling, not a principle— Henry Mackenzie

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she had a feeling that all would be well— Parker

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Affection is applied mainly to such feelings as are also inclinations or likings; the word therefore sometimes suggests desire or striving

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the heart ... we are, by foolish custom . . . impelled to call the seat of the affections— Rose Macaulay

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that serene and blessed mood, in which the affections gently lead us on— Wordsworth

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music played with affection and understanding— Kolodin

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Emotion usually suggests a condition that involves more of the total mental and physical response than does feeling or implies feelings marked by excitement or agitation

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eagerness for emotion and adventure— Sydney Smith

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means of exciting religious emotion— Ruskin

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a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty emotion— George Eliot

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Sentiment connotes a larger intellectual element in the feeling than any of the others; it often is applied specifically to an emotion inspired by an idea

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his own anti-slavery sentiments were sincere— Boatfield

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Commonly the word suggests refined, sometimes romantic, occasionally affected or artificial, feeling

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that moral sentiment which exists in every human breast— Bancroft

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his opinions are more the result of conviction than of sentiment— J. R. Lowell

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Sterne has been called a man overflowing with sentiment on paper but devoid of real feeling

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Passion suggests powerful or controlling emotion; more than affection, it implies urgency of desire (as for possession or revenge)

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hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes about, bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease— Gray

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the ruling passion, be it what it will, the ruling passion conquers reason still— Pope

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give me that man that is not passion's slave— Shak.

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Analogous words: impressing or impression, touching, affecting or affection (see corresponding verbs at AFFECT vb 1): *mood, humor, temper, vein

3 feel, *atmosphere, aura

Analogous words: *impression, impress, imprint: peculiarity, individuality, characteristic (see corresponding adjectives at CHARACTERISTIC): *quality, property, character, attribute