sense (sĕns)
n.

1. 1. Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body are received and felt, as the faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, and equilibrium.
   2. A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation: a sense of fatigue and hunger.
2. senses The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.
3. 1. An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate: a sense of diplomatic timing.
   2. A capacity to appreciate or understand: a keen sense of humor.
   3. A vague feeling or presentiment: a sense of impending doom.
   4. Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness: has no sense of shame.
4. 1. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost.
   2. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses?
   3. Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours.
5. 1. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy.
   2. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See synonyms at meaning.
6. 1. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment.
   2. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues.

tr.v., sensed, sens·ing, sens·es.

1. To become aware of; perceive.
2. To grasp; understand.
3. To detect automatically: sense radioactivity.

adj.
Genetics. Of or relating to the portion of the strand of double-stranded DNA that serves as a template for and is transcribed into RNA.

[Middle English, meaning, from Old French sens, from Latin sēnsus, the faculty of perceiving, from past participle of sentīre, to feel.]

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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