common sense
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.89 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Ordinary sensible understanding; one's basic intelligence which allows for plain understanding and without which good decisions or judgments cannot be made.
Uncountable
noun
One of the four interior senses; the one by which information from the five exterior senses is understood and interpreted.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation."
- "While there are not yet studies to prove it, common sense tells us that a stressed and sick animal is not an ideal candidate to eventually make a healthy meal."
- "Common sense, by contrast to self-attentiveness, involves other-attentiveness, as a person pays attention to the social world around them and to the structure of tacit meanings that others impart through the use of utterances and embodied conduct. […] Common sense as other-attentiveness means that a participant pays attention to another’s world as a condition for bespeaking one’s own."
- "This common ſenſe is the Iudge or Moderator of the reſt, by whom we diſcerne all differences of obiects; for by mine eye I doe not knowe that I ſee, or by mine eare that I heare, but by my common ſenſe, […]"
Etymology
Calque of Middle French sens commun and its source, Latin sēnsus commūnis, itself a calque of Ancient Greek κοινὴ αἴσθησις (koinḕ aísthēsis).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: κοινὴ αἴσθησις