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conscience
[ kon-shuhns ]
noun
- the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action:
to follow the dictates of conscience.
- the complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.
- an inhibiting sense of what is prudent:
I'd eat another piece of pie but my conscience would bother me.
- Obsolete. consciousness; self-knowledge.
- Obsolete. strict and reverential observance.
conscience
/ ˈkɒnʃəns /
noun
- the sense of right and wrong that governs a person's thoughts and actions
- regulation of one's actions in conformity to this sense
- a supposed universal faculty of moral insight
- conscientiousness; diligence
- a feeling of guilt or anxiety
he has a conscience about his unkind action
- obsolete.consciousness
- in conscience or in all conscience
- with regard to truth and justice
- certainly
- on one's consciencecausing feelings of guilt or remorse
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Derived Forms
- ˈconscienceless, adjective
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Other Words From
- conscience·less adjective
- conscience·less·ly adverb
- conscience·less·ness noun
- sub·conscience noun
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Word History and Origins
Origin of conscience1
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Word History and Origins
Origin of conscience1
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Idioms and Phrases
- have something on one's conscience, to feel guilty about something, as an act that one considers wrong:
She behaves as if she had something on her conscience.
- in all conscience, Also in conscience.
- in all reason and fairness.
More idioms and phrases containing conscience
see have a clear conscience ; in conscience .Discover More
Example Sentences
Instead, straighten your civic backbone and push back in clear conscience.
Better to be a beggar in freedom,” he cried out, “than to be forced into compromises against my conscience.
Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Oskar Schindler—these names come readily to mind when we think of heroes of conscience.
As you put it, “letting some business owners exercise their conscience would cause no harm to gays.”
“Nothing in this country of good conscience has ever happened without protest,” he said.
She reached forward to it in ecstasy; but she might not enjoy it, save at the price which her conscience exacted.
In this way it will be managed with less offense and with more ease to the conscience than now.
My conscience importuned me to tell her bluntly that they would only come into Walsh feet first.
That he might lose his head and 'introduce an element of sex' was conscience confessing that it had been already introduced.
But the conscience of Louis was at rest; and he soon found that "man does not live by bread alone!"
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Related Words
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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