sense

sense n 1 *sensation, feeling, sensibility

Analogous words: awareness, consciousness, cognizance (see corresponding adjectives at AWARE): perception, *discernment, discrimination, penetration

2 Sense, common sense, good sense, horse sense, gumption, judgment, wisdom can all mean the quality of mind or character which enables one to make intelligent choices or decisions or to reach intelligent conclusions.

Sense, because of its numerous significations, is often, when this meaning is intended, called common sense, good sense, or horse sense . All four terms imply a capacity—usually a native capacity—for seeing things as they are and without illusion or emotional bias, for making practical choices or decisions that are sane, prudent, fair, and reasonable and that commend themselves to the normal or average good mind

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when it came to taking care of myself, I had little to offer next to the practical sense of an illiterate sharecropper— Mailer

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"Jane is a goose," said the doctor, irritably. "Maggy is the only one that has any sense in that family"— Deland

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the common sense of common men . . . has not been seriously affected by these still academic aberrations of our alleged wise men— Niebuhr

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women have often more of what is called good sense than men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects . .. more truly and naturally— Hazlitt

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Gumption implies native wit or sound common sense often combined with initiative and drive

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there isn't a grain of intelligence in it Nobody with more gumption than a grasshopper could go and sit and listen—D. H. Lawrence

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in practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption— James

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Judgment seldom applies to a native quality though it usually suggests a foundation in native good sense. But it also suggests intellectual qualities (as discernment of facts or conditions that are not obvious as well as knowledge of those that are ascertainable and an ability to comprehend the significance of those facts and conditions and to draw correct unbiased conclusions from them) which are the result of training, discipline, and experience

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'tis true that strength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what keep it established— Hardy

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the ultimate test of true worth in pleasure, as in everything else, is the trained judgment of the good and sensible man— Dickinson

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Wisdom is of all these terms the one of highest praise. It often suggests great soundness of judgment in practical affairs and unusual sagacity

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common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom— Coleridge

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but it is also capable of suggesting an ideal quality of mind or character that is the result of a trained judgment exercised not only in practical affairs but in philosophical speculation, of wide experience in life and thought, of great learning, and of deep understanding

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for wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it— Prov 8:11

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wisdom is said to be the funded experience which man has gathered by livings but for so many harvests the crop is still a light one. Knowledge he has gained and power, but not goodness and understanding— Repplier

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Analogous words: *prudence, foresight, discretion: understanding, comprehension, appreciation (see corresponding verbs at UNDERSTAND): intelligence, brain, wit (see MIND)

3 *meaning, acceptation, signification, significance, import

Analogous words: denotation, connotation (see under DENOTE)