SENTIENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sentient mean? 

• SENTIENT (adjective)
  The adjective SENTIENT has 2 senses:

1. endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness

2. consciously perceiving

  Familiarity information: SENTIENT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SENTIENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness

Synonyms:

animate; sentient

Context example:

the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage

Similar:

sensate (having physical sensation)

Attribute:

sentience (the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness)

Antonym:

insentient (devoid of feeling and consciousness and animation)

Derivation:

sentience (state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Consciously perceiving

Context example:

a boy so sentient of his surroundings

Similar:

conscious (knowing and perceiving; having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts)

Derivation:

sentience (the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness)

sentience; sentiency (the faculty through which the external world is apprehended)

 Context examples 

If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!—to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

When I was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough, partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)