CONSCIENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does conscience mean? 

• CONSCIENCE (noun)
  The noun CONSCIENCE has 3 senses:

1. motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions

2. conformity to one's own sense of right conduct

3. a feeling of shame when you do something immoral

  Familiarity information: CONSCIENCE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONSCIENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting goals

Synonyms:

conscience; moral sense; scruples; sense of right and wrong

Hypernyms ("conscience" is a kind of...):

ethical motive; ethics; morality; morals (motivation based on ideas of right and wrong)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "conscience"):

superego ((psychoanalysis) that part of the unconscious mind that acts as a conscience)

small voice; voice of conscience; wee small voice (an inner voice that judges your behavior)

sense of duty; sense of shame (a motivating awareness of ethical responsibility)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

a person of unflagging conscience

Hypernyms ("conscience" is a kind of...):

morality (concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "conscience"):

conscientiousness (the quality of being in accord with the dictates of conscience)

unconscientiousness (the quality of being willing to ignore the dictates of conscience)

Derivation:

conscientious (guided by or in accordance with conscience or sense of right and wrong)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A feeling of shame when you do something immoral

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Context example:

he has no conscience about his cruelty

Hypernyms ("conscience" is a kind of...):

shame (a painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt)

Derivation:

conscientious (guided by or in accordance with conscience or sense of right and wrong)

 Context examples 

As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He is one of the most dangerous men in England—a ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a man without heart or conscience.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind at ease, or a conscience void of reproach.”

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

When a man’s conscience is easy you can’t rattle him.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His conscience was clean at any rate.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

If his own guilty conscience had not struck him down it is likely enough that I might have had his blood upon my soul.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The blood flushed into his high forehead, but his conscience held him dumb.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Right here, I think, entered the austere conscience of my Puritan ancestry, impelling me toward lurid deeds and sanctioning even murder as right conduct.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Conscience made cowards of us both.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It is that we become as him; that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him—without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)