Found 2 items, similar to common sense.
English → English (WordNet) Definition: common sense common sense n : sound practical judgment; “I can't see the sense in doing it now”; “he hasn't got the sense God gave little green apples”; “fortunately she had the good sense to run away” [syn: good sense, gumption, horse sense, sense, mother wit ]
English → English (gcide) Definition: Common sense Common sense \Com“mon sense”\ See Common sense, under Sense. Common \Com"mon\, a. [Compar. Commoner; superl. Commonest.] [OE. commun, comon, OF. comun, F. commun, fr. L. communis; com- + munis ready to be of service; cf. Skr. mi to make fast, set up, build, Goth. gamains common, G. gemein, and E. mean low, common. Cf. Immunity, Commune, n. & v.] 1. Belonging or relating equally, or similarly, to more than one; as, you and I have a common interest in the property. [1913 Webster] Though life and sense be common to men and brutes. --Sir M. Hale. [1913 Webster] 2. Belonging to or shared by, affecting or serving, all the members of a class, considered together; general; public; as, properties common to all plants; the common schools; the Book of Common Prayer. [1913 Webster] Such actions as the common good requireth. --Hooker. [1913 Webster] The common enemy of man. --Shak. [1913 Webster] 3. Often met with; usual; frequent; customary. [1913 Webster] Grief more than common grief. --Shak. [1913 Webster] 4. Not distinguished or exceptional; inconspicuous; ordinary; plebeian; -- often in a depreciatory sense. [1913 Webster] The honest, heart-felt enjoyment of common life. --W. Irving. [1913 Webster] This fact was infamous And ill beseeming any common man, Much more a knight, a captain and a leader. --Shak. [1913 Webster] Above the vulgar flight of common souls. --A. Murphy. [1913 Webster] 5. Profane; polluted. [Obs.] [1913 Webster] What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. --Acts x. 15. [1913 Webster] 6. Given to habits of lewdness; prostitute. [1913 Webster] A dame who herself was common. --L'Estrange. [1913 Webster] Common bar (Law) Same as Blank bar, under Blank. Common barrator (Law), one who makes a business of instigating litigation. Common Bench, a name sometimes given to the English Court of Common Pleas. Common brawler (Law), one addicted to public brawling and quarreling. See Brawler. Common carrier (Law), one who undertakes the office of carrying (goods or persons) for hire. Such a carrier is bound to carry in all cases when he has accommodation, and when his fixed price is tendered, and he is liable for all losses and injuries to the goods, except those which happen in consequence of the act of God, or of the enemies of the country, or of the owner of the property himself. Common chord (Mus.), a chord consisting of the fundamental tone, with its third and fifth. Common council, the representative (legislative) body, or the lower branch of the representative body, of a city or other municipal corporation. Common crier, the crier of a town or city. Common divisor (Math.), a number or quantity that divides two or more numbers or quantities without a remainder; a common measure. Common gender (Gram.), the gender comprising words that may be of either the masculine or the feminine gender. Common law, a system of jurisprudence developing under the guidance of the courts so as to apply a consistent and reasonable rule to each litigated case. It may be superseded by statute, but unless superseded it controls. --Wharton. Note: It is by others defined as the unwritten law (especially of England), the law that receives its binding force from immemorial usage and universal reception, as ascertained and expressed in the judgments of the courts. This term is often used in contradistinction from statute law. Many use it to designate a law common to the whole country. It is also used to designate the whole body of English (or other) law, as distinguished from its subdivisions, local, civil, admiralty, equity, etc. See Law. Common lawyer, one versed in common law. Common lewdness (Law), the habitual performance of lewd acts in public. Common multiple (Arith.) See under Multiple. Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing). Common nuisance (Law), that which is deleterious to the health or comfort or sense of decency of the community at large. Common pleas, one of the three superior courts of common law at Westminster, presided over by a chief justice and four puisne judges. Its jurisdiction is confined to civil matters. Courts bearing this title exist in several of the United States, having, however, in some cases, both civil and criminal jurisdiction extending over the whole State. In other States the jurisdiction of the common pleas is limited to a county, and it is sometimes called a county court . Its powers are generally defined by statute. Common prayer, the liturgy of the Church of England, or of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States, which all its clergy are enjoined to use. It is contained in the Book of Common Prayer. Common school, a school maintained at the public expense, and open to all. Common scold (Law), a woman addicted to scolding indiscriminately, in public. Common seal, a seal adopted and used by a corporation. Common sense. (a) A supposed sense which was held to be the common bond of all the others. [Obs.] --Trench. (b) Sound judgment. See under Sense. Common time (Mus.), that variety of time in which the measure consists of two or of four equal portions. In common, equally with another, or with others; owned, shared, or used, in community with others; affecting or affected equally. Out of the common, uncommon; extraordinary. Tenant in common, one holding real or personal property in common with others, having distinct but undivided interests. See Joint tenant, under Joint. To make common cause with, to join or ally one's self with. Syn: General; public; popular; national; universal; frequent; ordinary; customary; usual; familiar; habitual; vulgar; mean; trite; stale; threadbare; commonplace. See Mutual, Ordinary, General. [1913 Webster] Sense \Sense\, n. [L. sensus, from sentire, sensum, to perceive, to feel, from the same root as E. send; cf. OHG. sin sense, mind, sinnan to go, to journey, G. sinnen to meditate, to think: cf. F. sens. For the change of meaning cf. See, v. t. See Send, and cf. Assent, Consent, Scent, v. t., Sentence, Sentient.] 1. (Physiol.) A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. See Muscular sense, under Muscular, and Temperature sense , under Temperature. [1913 Webster] Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep. --Shak. [1913 Webster] What surmounts the reach Of human sense I shall delineate. --Milton. [1913 Webster] The traitor Sense recalls The soaring soul from rest. --Keble. [1913 Webster] 2. Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling. [1913 Webster] In a living creature, though never so great, the sense and the affects of any one part of the body instantly make a transcursion through the whole. --Bacon. [1913 Webster] 3. Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation. [1913 Webster] This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover. --Sir P. Sidney. [1913 Webster] High disdain from sense of injured merit. --Milton. [1913 Webster] 4. Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning. “He speaks sense.” --Shak. [1913 Webster] He raves; his words are loose As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense. --Dryden. [1913 Webster] 5. That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion. [1913 Webster] I speak my private but impartial sense With freedom. --Roscommon. [1913 Webster] The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster] 6. Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a remark. [1913 Webster] So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense. --Neh. viii. 8. [1913 Webster] I think 't was in another sense. --Shak. [1913 Webster] 7. Moral perception or appreciation. [1913 Webster] Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no sense of the most friendly offices. --L' Estrange. [1913 Webster] 8. (Geom.) One of two opposite directions in which a line, surface, or volume, may be supposed to be described by the motion of a point, line, or surface. [1913 Webster] Common sense, according to Sir W. Hamilton: (a) “The complement of those cognitions or convictions which we receive from nature, which all men possess in common, and by which they test the truth of knowledge and the morality of actions.” (b) “The faculty of first principles.” These two are the philosophical significations. (c) “Such ordinary complement of intelligence, that,if a person be deficient therein, he is accounted mad or foolish.” (d) When the substantive is emphasized: “Native practical intelligence, natural prudence, mother wit, tact in behavior, acuteness in the observation of character, in contrast to habits of acquired learning or of speculation.” Moral sense. See under Moral, (a) . The inner sense, or The internal sense, capacity of the mind to be aware of its own states; consciousness; reflection. “This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.” --Locke. Sense capsule (Anat.), one of the cartilaginous or bony cavities which inclose, more or less completely, the organs of smell, sight, and hearing. Sense organ (Physiol.), a specially irritable mechanism by which some one natural force or form of energy is enabled to excite sensory nerves; as the eye, ear, an end bulb or tactile corpuscle, etc. Sense organule (Anat.), one of the modified epithelial cells in or near which the fibers of the sensory nerves terminate. [1913 Webster] Syn: Understanding; reason. Usage: Sense, Understanding, Reason. Some philosophers have given a technical signification to these terms, which may here be stated. Sense is the mind's acting in the direct cognition either of material objects or of its own mental states. In the first case it is called the outer, in the second the inner, sense. Understanding is the logical faculty, i. e., the power of apprehending under general conceptions, or the power of classifying, arranging, and making deductions. Reason is the power of apprehending those first or fundamental truths or principles which are the conditions of all real and scientific knowledge, and which control the mind in all its processes of investigation and deduction. These distinctions are given, not as established, but simply because they often occur in writers of the present day. [1913 Webster]