emotion
Americannoun
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an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
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any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc.
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any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.
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an instance of this.
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something that causes such a reaction.
the powerful emotion of a great symphony.
noun
Usage
What does emotion mean? An emotion is a spontaneous mental reaction, such as joy, sorrow, hate, and love. Emotions always involve mental activity and sometimes have physical effects on the body, as in She could tell what emotion he was feeling by looking at his face. The word emotion is used generally to refer collectively to these intense feelings or an expression of them, as in The director really wanted to see some emotion from the lead actress. What causes someone’s emotions and how someone feels or expresses their emotions differs from person to person. You and your friend might both feel sad to have failed an important test. Your reaction to your sad emotion might be to cry, while your friend’s reaction might be to shout. The word emotional describes something that is related to emotions, causing an emotion to happen, or easily experiencing emotions. Example: I have a hard time sharing my emotions with people and instead try to appear stoic.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of emotion
First recorded in 1570–80; apparently from Middle French esmotion, from esmovoir “to set in motion, move the feelings,” from Vulgar Latin exmovēre (unrecorded; literary Latin ēmovēre ); see e- 1 ( def. ), move ( def. ), motion ( def. )
Explanation
An emotion is a strong feeling, like the emotion you feel when you see your best friend at the movies with a group of people who cause trouble for you. The word emotion comes from the Middle French word émotion, which means "a (social) moving, stirring, agitation." We feel many different emotions every day, like love, fear, joy and sadness — just to name a few. On its own, emotion means "the expression of feeling," like a musician who plays with great emotion, or an actor whose face conveys emotions, even when he or she is just standing quietly on the stage.
Vocabulary lists containing emotion
The SAT: Language of the Test, List 4
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The New SAT: The Language of the Test
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"Fears and Phobias," Vocabulary from the article
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"It was about separating the emotion from the job at hand. We are all professionals," he added.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Context allows people to recognize sarcasm, humor, sincerity, and emotion.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 2026
“The biggest emotion for me has to be grief, but specifically migratory grief,” Mora said.
From Salon ● Jul. 11, 2026
“There’s a current of emotion that runs through the process. It’s their baby,” Brown said.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
The familiarity in Ama’s eyes, the emotion she had when she hugged me, the intensity she held when she was warning me—it didn’t seem like how a stranger would react.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
Then it hacked the module that enforces blind obedience and embarked on a long journey to becoming human, with a full set of emotions spanning love, grief and . . . just kidding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Platforms are required to deploy systems to recognise extreme emotions and to implement crisis intervention mechanisms.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
To Bateman, no amount of convincing mimicry changes the fact that an AI figure has never actually experienced the emotions it’s portraying.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
Fortunately, she was able to work with a British therapist living in France to work through these emotions.
From Salon ● Jul. 11, 2026
The music acts as a stimulus to which the body responds, after which sensation returns to the brain to form emotions, which deepens the significance of the experience.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
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.
