| 释义 |
sentient, a. and n.|ˈsɛnʃɪənt|
[ad. L. sentient-em, pr. pple. of sentīre to feel.]
A. adj.
1. That feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or function of sensation or of perception by the senses.
1632J. Guillim Heraldry iii. xxiv. (ed. 2) 250 Forasmuch as God would that the faculties both intelligent and sentient should predominate in the head [etc.]. a1676Hale Prim. Orig. Man. i. ii. (1677) 56 This acting of the sentient Phantasie is performed..by a presence of sense, as the Horse is under the sense of hunger, and that without any formal Syllogism presseth him to eat. 1733Cheyne Eng. Malady i. viii. §3 (1734) 71 The Nerves..propagate this Vibration..to the intelligent or sentient Principle in the Brain. 1846Grote Greece i. xiii. (1862) I. 197 [The legend] ascribes to the ship sentient powers. 1865Tyndall Fragm. Sci. (1879) I. ii. 73 Thus is sentient man acted on by Nature. 1879Lewes Probl. Life & Mind Ser. iii. I. 8 We can define it [the relation of Mind to Life] by analytically distinguishing certain functions as sentient from other functions as nutrient.
b. Conscious or percipient of something.
1815Southey Roderick xvii. 45 Of all within Oblivious there he sate, sentient alone Of outward nature. 1844Mrs. Browning Vis. Poets xc, The poet's sight grew sentient Of a strange company around.
2. Phys. Of organs or tissues: Responsive to sensory stimuli.
1822–29Good's Study Med. (ed. 3) IV. 290 The sentient fluid with which they [the papillæ of the tongue] are supplied. 1843R. J. Graves Syst. Clin. Med. Introd. 14 In cases of tic douloureux we divide the sentient and not the motive nerves. 1878M. Foster Physiol. iii. i. 394 A stimulus being brought to bear on some sentient surface.
3. Characterized by the exercise of the senses.
1906H. Jones in Hibbert Jrnl. Apr. 558 Sentient experience in short is reality, and what is not this, is not real.
B. a. absol. That which has sensation or feeling. b. n. One who or something which has sensation.
1603Holland Plutarch's Mor. 1042 Intelligence is the motion of the intelligence about that which is stable..: but opinion is the mansion of the sentient about that which moveth. 1661Glanvill Van. Dogm. xxii. 220 Some extraordinary alterations in the Brain duplicate that which is but a single object to our undistemper'd Sentient. 1678Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. i. §28. 34 They concluded, that all the Phænomena of Inanimate Bodies, and their various Transformations might be clearly resolved into these two things, Partly something that is Real..and partly something that is Phantastical in the Sentient. 1691Howe Redeemer's Tears, etc. (1846) 210 What can you think of that Spirit that feels every where? that is in the body a universal sentient? 1817Coleridge Biog. Lit. (1907) I. viii. 90 How being can transform itself into a knowing, becomes conceivable on one only coindition; namely, if it can be shown that the vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself a species of being. 1865Grote Plato I. i. 80 Particular modifications of atoms..produced upon the sentient the impressions of different colours. 1886F. W. H. Myers Phantasms Living I. Introd. 71 The insentient has awoke..into sentiency; the sentient into the fuller consciousness of human minds.
Hence ˈsentiently adv.
1847in Webster. |