Definition of: sense

(sens) noun
1. The faculty of sensation; sense perception.
2. Any of certain agencies by or through which an individual receives impressions of the external world; popularly, one of the five senses.
3. Physiol. Any receptor, or group of receptors, specialized to receive and transmit stimuli, either external, as of sight, taste, smell, etc., or internal, as of hunger, thirst, sex, equilibrium, muscular and visceral movements, etc.
4. Rational perception accompanied by feeling; realization; discriminating cognition: a sense of wrong.
5. Normal power of mind or understanding; sound or natural judgment: The fellow has no sense; often in the plural: She is coming to her senses.
6. Signification; import; meaning.
7. Opinion, view, or judgment of the majority: The sense of the meeting was manifest.
8. That which commends itself to the understanding as being in accordance with reason and good judgment: to talk sense.
9. Capacity to perceive or appreciate: a sense of color.
10. Geom. One of two opposite directions in which a magnitude may be described or generated.
11. Direction; trend. See synonyms under FEELING, MIND.
—the five senses The Aristotelian division of senses into sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch: now collectively known as the special senses.
—sixth sense
1. Capacity for perception beyond the normal range of the senses; extrasensory perception.
2. Intuitive or premonitory knowledge, especially as affecting or affected by the senses.
3. Cenesthesia.
—v.t. sensed, sens·ing
1. To become aware of through the senses.
2. Colloq. To comprehend; understand. [<MF sens <L sensus perception <sentire feel]