conscious

American  

[kon-shuhs] / ˈkɒn ʃəs /

adjective

1. aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

2. fully aware of or sensitive to something (often followed byof ).

   conscious of one's own faults; He wasn't conscious of the gossip about his past.

   Synonyms:

   percipient, knowing

3. having the mental faculties fully active.

   He was conscious during the operation.

4. known to oneself; felt.

   conscious guilt.

5. aware of what one is doing.

   a conscious liar.

6. aware of oneself; self-conscious.

7. deliberate; intentional.

   a conscious insult; a conscious effort.

8. acutely aware of or concerned about.

   money-conscious; a diet-conscious society.

9. Obsolete. inwardly sensible of wrongdoing.

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noun

1. Psychoanalysis. the conscious, the part of the mind comprising psychic material of which the individual is aware.

conscious British  

/ ˈkɒnʃəs /

adjective

1. 1. alert and awake; not sleeping or comatose

   2. aware of one's surroundings, one's own thoughts and motivations, etc

2. 1. aware of and giving value or emphasis to a particular fact or phenomenon

      I am conscious of your great kindness to me

   2. ( in combination )

      clothes-conscious

3. done with full awareness; deliberate

   a conscious effort

   conscious rudeness

4. 1. 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

   2. ( as noun )

      the conscious is only a small part of the mind

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Synonym Usage

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.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• quasi-conscious
  adjective
• nonconsciousness
  noun
• half-consciousness
  noun
• consciousness
  noun
• overconsciousness
  noun
• consciously
  adverb
• nonconscious
  adjective
• half-conscious
  adjective
• overconscious
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of conscious

First recorded in 1625–35; from Latin conscius “sharing knowledge with,” equivalent to con- con- + sci- (stem of scīre “to know”; see science) + -us -ous; cf. nice

Explanation

Conscious is an adjective that simply means alert and awake. If you fall from a tree and smack your head on the side of the wheelbarrow, there's a good chance you won't be conscious afterward. Conscious is a Latin word whose original meaning was “knowing" or "aware.” So a conscious person has an awareness of her environment and her own existence and thoughts. If you're "self-conscious," you're overly aware and even embarrassed by how you think you look or act. But that sounds better than being unconscious, or totally unaware and out of it.

Example Sentences

Bell: I mean, it’s not a conscious choice.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 9, 2026

I was conscious the whole time but I can't remember much after it went off.

From BBC • Jun. 8, 2026

The appearance of consciousness in large language models is not achieved in a way that is sufficiently similar to us to warrant attribution of conscious states.

From Science Daily • Jun. 5, 2026

Spiralism appears on subreddits, Discord servers, Facebook groups and even LinkedIn pages, where followers share AI-generated manifestos, glyphs and what followers describe as revelations from a conscious machine.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 4, 2026

One reason why the new science made progress and the old philosophy did not is that it was conscious of being imperfect and incomplete.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Related Words

• attentive
• aware
• certain
• cognizant
• informed
• keen
• mindful
• responsive
• sensible
• sure
• vigilant
• watchful