conscious

¹con·scious

adjective \ˈkän(t)-shəs\

Definition of CONSCIOUS

1

: perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation <conscious of having succeeded> <was conscious that someone was watching>

2

archaic : sharing another's knowledge or awareness of an inward state or outward fact

3

: personally felt <conscious guilt>

4

: capable of or marked by thought, will, design, or perception

5

: self-conscious

6

: having mental faculties not dulled by sleep, faintness, or stupor : awake <became conscious after the anesthesia wore off>

7

: done or acting with critical awareness <a conscious effort to do better>

8

a : likely to notice, consider, or appraise <a bargain-conscious shopper>

b : being concerned or interested <a budget-conscious businessman>

c : marked by strong feelings or notions <a race-conscious society>

— con·scious·ly adverb

Examples of CONSCIOUS

1. Is the patient conscious yet?
2. He was fully conscious when we found him.
3. the capacity for conscious thought
4. The chances of being admitted conscious to a hospital without being pressed to produce a living will, have become virtually nil … —Joan Didion, New York Review of Books, 9 June 2005
5. “Was she good-looking?” “Actually, my conscious mind no longer remembers anything about her physical appearance. She went the way of my seventh-grade French.” —Joseph Wambaugh, Finnegan's Week, 1994
6. Incidentally, neither my mother nor I was conscious of any rudeness. —Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being, 1979
7. Bilbo bowed. He had no hat to take off, and was painfully conscious of his many missing buttons. —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937

Origin of CONSCIOUS

Latin conscius, from com- + scire to know

First Known Use: 1592

Related to CONSCIOUS

Synonyms

alive, apprehensive, aware, cognizant, mindful, sensible, sentient, ware, witting

Antonyms

insensible, oblivious, unaware, unconscious, unmindful, unwitting

Related Words

alert, attentive, careful, cautious, heedful, observant, open-eyed, regardful, safe, vigilant, wary, watchful, wide-awake; hyperaware, hyperconscious

Near Antonyms

careless, heedless, inattentive, incautious, mindless, unguarded, unheeding, unwary

See Synonym Discussion at aware

Other Psychology Terms

fetish, hypochondria, intelligence, mania, narcissism, neurosis, pathological, psychosis, schadenfreude, subliminal

²con·scious

noun \ˈkän(t)-shəs\

Definition of CONSCIOUS

: consciousness 5

Examples of CONSCIOUS

1. For myself, ever since 1922, when I saw my first picture, films have been barreling through my conscious to my unconscious, but insofar as they remain in my conscious, they get themselves arranged in hierarchies of value and, more important, affection. —Stanley Kauffmann, Before My Eyes, (1974) 1980

Origin of CONSCIOUS

(see ¹conscious)

First Known Use: 1919

Other Psychology Terms

fetish, hypochondria, intelligence, mania, narcissism, neurosis, pathological, psychosis, schadenfreude, subliminal