Meaning

(uncountable) Mental focus..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable) Mental focus.
2. (countable) An action or remark expressing concern for or interest in someone or something, especially romantic interest.
3. (uncountable, military) A state of alertness in the standing position.
4. (uncountable, machine learning) A kind of prioritisation technique in neural networks that assigns soft weights between tokens from two (or more) input sequences in order to compute the required output.
5. (military) Used as a command to bring soldiers to the attention position.
6. A call for people to be quiet/stop doing what they are presently doing and pay heed to what they are to be told or shown.

Example Sentences

Please direct your attention to the following words.

Most of the pictures of common life that we meet with in books are drawn in the shape of novels, with the view of attracting the attention of indolent readers; the question with authors being, not of what can I inform my neighbour by which he may be improved in head or heart, mind or morals? but what is the fashion of public taste? that by pandering to it I may secure sale and applause! Hence the present jumble of brains, the rack of invention to excite, supply, and cram the public appetite, all so agape after tales of the marvellous, till the picture of life is overwrought, and the image of nature bedaubed to disgust.

In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity.

One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

Lesper Killey was at her shoulder, jerking at the wash-faded denim of her jumper to get her attention.

But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.

She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper.

For some time past I have been the recipient of very marked attentions from a young lady.

Word Forms

• attentions

Synonyms for attention

Antonyms for attention

Related Words

When Should You Use Attention?

Use attention when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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