Sentient

Quick meaning: Sentient is an adjective meaning Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.

Meaning

Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.

More Meanings

1. Able to consciously perceive through the use of sense faculties.
2. (loosely, chiefly science fiction) Possessing human-like awareness and intelligence.
3. Lifeform with the capability to feel sensation, such as pain.
4. (loosely, chiefly science fiction) An intelligent, self-aware being.

Example Sentences

Consider fish, who are apparently sentient yet cognitively extremely primitive in comparison with humans.

Not even a microbe? I don't want to blow up something that could evolve into a sentient species in a couple of billion years.

The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers.

Obviously, other morally relevant considerations would apply to the case of a sentient fetus, as by acquiring sentience it acquires interests and moral status.

Word Forms

• sentients

Synonyms for sentient

Depending on context, synonyms include intelligence, sapient, sophont, aware, sensate, intelligent.

Antonyms for sentient

Common opposites include automaton, insensate, insentient.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include conscious, sensate, intelligent, sensible, sensitive, reasonable.

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