Sentient
/ˈsɛn.ʃi.ənt/ adj, noun
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Lifeform with the capability to feel sensation, such as pain.
- 2 An intelligent, self-aware being. broadly
"The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers."
Adjective
- 1 Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.
"Consider fish, who are apparently sentient yet cognitively extremely primitive in comparison with humans."
- 2 Able to consciously perceive through the use of sense faculties.
- 3 Possessing human-like awareness and intelligence. broadly
"While I had heard such talk before, I had always felt that sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected [Ray Kurzweil], I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility."
Adjective
- 1 endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness wordnet
- 2 consciously perceiving wordnet
Example
More examples"Maybe in another universe, sentient beings, as well as their very environment, are incorporeal."
Etymology
From Latin sentiēns (“feeling, perceiving”), present active participle of sentiō.