Sentient
adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 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."
- 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."
- 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.
Related phrases
More for "sentient"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.