sentience
Americannoun
noun
-
the state or quality of being sentient; awareness
-
sense perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling
Other Word Forms
- nonsentience noun
- nonsentiency noun
Etymology
Origin of sentience
First recorded in 1830–40; senti(ent) + -ence
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.
Plant sentience, however, is goal-directed and suggests clear cognition of the surrounding environment.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 15, 2026
Soon, they had philosophical discussions about AI’s potential for sentience.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 4, 2026
When audiences last saw Vision, the reconstructed android had just regained his memories and, presumably, his sentience, before flying off into the unknown.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 2, 2026
While raising the possibility of A.I. sentience will get you roundly mocked by self-described A.I. experts on Reddit, smarter people than them think there might be something to the idea.
From Slate • Aug. 20, 2025
He had loved the library, and had felt, as a boy, as though it had a kind of sentience, and perhaps loved him back.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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.
