conscious
[kon-shuhs]
- aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
- fully aware of or sensitive to something (often followed by of): conscious of one's own faults; He wasn't conscious of the gossip about his past.
- having the mental faculties fully active: He was conscious during the operation.
- known to oneself; felt: conscious guilt.
- aware of what one is doing: a conscious liar.
- aware of oneself; self-conscious.
- deliberate; intentional: a conscious insult; a conscious effort.
- acutely aware of or concerned about: money-conscious; a diet-conscious society.
- Obsolete. inwardly sensible of wrongdoing.
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- the conscious, Psychoanalysis. the part of the mind comprising psychic material of which the individual is aware.
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Origin of conscious
Synonyms
See more synonyms for on Thesaurus.comSynonym study
2. Conscious, aware, cognizant refer to an individual sense of recognition of something within or without oneself. Conscious implies to be awake or awakened to an inner realization of a fact, a truth, a condition, etc.: to be conscious of an extreme weariness. Aware lays the emphasis on sense perceptions insofar as they are the object of conscious recognition: He was aware of the odor of tobacco. Cognizant lays the emphasis on an outer recognition more on the level of reason and knowledge than on the sensory level alone: He was cognizant of their drawbacks.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
sensiblewatchfulsuremindfulcertaininformedawarekeencognizantresponsivevigilantattentivepremeditateddeliberatecalculatedresponsiblerationalreflectiveself-consciousacquaintedExamples from the Web for conscious
Contemporary Examples
To his credit, Huckabee is conscious of the fact that he will need a cluster of deep-pocketed patrons and bundlers.
Can a seven year old—let alone a two year old—really make the conscious calculations necessary to create “true” works of art?
And, as noted with victim blaming, this undermines men as thinking, rational, conscious beings.
And at the time he wrote that letter, Derek was also conscious of his own mortality.
This conscious uncoupling was a big deal because WTF is that even.
Historical Examples
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it.
The moment a man begins to be conscious of an audience he is artistically damned.
Ballads of a BohemianRobert W. Service
Unless we were conscious of the energies such a call would not reach us.
The Conquest of FearBasil King
There speaks the sophisticated and conscious literary technician!
The Dramatic Values in PlautusWilton Wallace Blancke
He was conscious of a feeling of failure when he left her at last.
KMary Roberts Rinehart
conscious
- alert and awake; not sleeping or comatose
- aware of one's surroundings, one's own thoughts and motivations, etc
- aware of and giving value or emphasis to a particular fact or phenomenonI am conscious of your great kindness to me
- (in combination)clothes-conscious
- done with full awareness; deliberatea conscious effort; conscious rudeness
- denoting or relating to a part of the human mind that is aware of a person's self, environment, and mental activity and that to a certain extent determines his choices of action
- (as noun)the conscious is only a small part of the mind
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Compare unconscious
Word Origin
C17: from Latin conscius sharing knowledge, from com- with + scīre to know
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for conscious
adj.
c.1600, "knowing, privy to," from Latin conscius "knowing, aware," from conscire (see conscience); probably a loan-translation of Greek syneidos. A word adopted from the Latin poets and much mocked at first. Sense of "active and awake" is from 1837.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
conscious
(kŏn′shəs)- Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.
- Intentionally conceived or done; deliberate.
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- In psychoanalysis, the component of waking awareness perceptible by a person at any given instant.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
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