Conscious

//ˈkɑn.ʃəs// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the consciousness.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.

    "The noise woke me, but it was another few minutes before I was fully conscious."

  2. 2
    Aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness.

    "The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious."

  3. 3
    Aware of, sensitive to; observing and noticing, or being strongly interested in or concerned about.

    "I was conscious of a noise behind me. a very class-conscious analysis"

  4. 4
    Deliberate, intentional, done with awareness of what one is doing.

    "He candidly confesses that it is an effort to account for Joseph Smith upon some other hypothesis than that he was a conscious fraud, bent on deceiving mankind."

  5. 5
    Known or felt personally, internally by a person.

    "conscious guilt"

Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    Self-conscious, or aware of wrongdoing, feeling guilty. rare

    "He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary glance at Elinor, replied, “Yes; it is my sister’s hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know.” Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise.."

Adjective
  1. 1
    (followed by ‘of’) showing realization or recognition of something wordnet
  2. 2
    knowing and perceiving; having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts wordnet
  3. 3
    intentionally conceived wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
cognizantawakedeliberateintendedsentientaboveground

Example

More examples

"I was conscious that something was missing."

Etymology

First use appears c. 1573 in the sense of "aware of wrongdoing".https://web.archive.org/web/20220714064352/https://www.lexico.com/definition/conscious From Latin cōnscius (“conscious, conscious of guilt”), itself from con- (a form of com- (“together”)) + scīre (“to know”) + -us.

Related phrases

calorie-consciousclass consciousclass-consciousconscious and orientedconscious hip hopconscious parallelismconscious rapconscious sedationconscious uncouplingcost-consciousfashion-conscioushealth-conscious

More for "conscious"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.