SENSATION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Sensation

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/sɛnsˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Sensation n.

(Physiol.) An impression, or the consciousness of an impression, made upon the central nervous organ, through the medium of a sensory or afferent nerve or one of the organs of sense; a feeling, or state of consciousness, whether agreeable or disagreeable, produced either by an external object (stimulus), or by some change in the internal state of the body. "Perception is only a special kind of knowledge, and sensation a special kind of feeling.... Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensation, though always coexistent, are always in the inverse ratio of each other."

A purely spiritual or psychical affection; agreeable or disagreeable feelings occasioned by objects that are not corporeal or material.

A state of excited interest or feeling, or that which causes it. "The sensation caused by the appearance of that work is still remembered by many."

Synonyms: Perception. Sensation, Perseption. The distinction between these words, when used in mental philosophy, may be thus stated; if I simply smell a rose, I have a sensation; if I refer that smell to the external object which occasioned it, I have a perception. Thus, the former is mere feeling, without the idea of an object; the latter is the mind's apprehension of some external object as occasioning that feeling. "Sensation properly expresses that change in the state of the mind which is produced by an impression upon an organ of sense (of which change we can conceive the mind to be conscious, without any knowledge of external objects). Perception, on the other hand, expresses the knowledge or the intimations we obtain by means of our sensations concerning the qualities of matter, and consequently involves, in every instance, the notion of externality, or outness, which it is necessary to exclude in order to seize the precise import of the word sensation."

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Etymology of 'Sensation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sensation" Quotes from Famous Books

... for one for Mamma, too, but he said he was very sorry, that privilege could not be extended to a woman. So I'm the only grafter in the family. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but shall make one at the first opportunity in order to get the sensation. ...

— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... watched them out of sight, with a choking sensation in his throat as he wondered if it would always be thus with him, and if the day would never come when he, too, could know what leisure meant, with no ...

— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... ruffled, not a bustling busybody, forever trotting about on the pavement looking for a new bun shop. It should not deliberately run to seek sensations, but it should never avoid one; it should never be afraid of one; it should never put one aside from an absurd sense of right and wrong. Every sensation is valuable. Sensations are the details that build up ...

— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... to the movement. But all the young critics of the eighties fought the battles of Zola with him and repeated, sometimes word for word, the memorable creed of French naturalism formulated long before by the Goncourt brothers: "The modern—everything for the artist is there: in the sensation, the intuition of the contemporary, of this spectacle of life with which one rubs elbows!" Such, with whatever later developments, was the central doctrine of young Germany in the eighties; such the belief that gradually expressed itself ...

— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... single grand crashes, with intervals of dead silence between. They may be heard through the day, if one listens, like a solemn undertone to all the shallow noises of the town; but at midnight, when all else is still, those successive shocks fall upon the ear with a sensation of inexpressible solemnity. All the air, from the pine forests to the sea, is filled with a light tremor, and the intermitting beats of sound are strong enough to jar a delicate ear. Their constant repetition at last produces a feeling ...

— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

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