sentient

adjective

sen·tient ˈsen(t)-sh(ē-)ənt

ˈsen-tē-ənt

Synonyms of sentient next

: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions

sentient beings

: aware

: finely sensitive in perception or feeling

sentiently adverb

Did you know?

You may have guessed that sentient has something to do with the senses. The initial spelling sent- or sens- is often a giveaway for such a meaning. A sentient being is one who perceives and responds to sensations of whatever kind—sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Sentient ultimately comes from the Latin verb sentire, which means "to feel" or "to perceive," and is related to the noun sensus, meaning "sense." A few related English words are sentiment and sentimental, which have to do with emotions, sensual, which relates to more physical sensations, and the trio of assent, consent, and dissent, which involve one's expressions of agreement (or disagreement in the case of dissent) in thought and feeling with another.

Example Sentences

sentient of the danger posed by the approaching hurricane

Recent Examples on the Web Last year, he was fired from Google, essentially for his insistence that its LaMDA chatbot was sentient. —

Steven Levy, WIRED, 24 Feb. 2023 Google pioneered advances in generative artificial intelligence, some of which underpin ChatGPT, and created the language model LaMDA, which a former Google engineer claimed was sentient. —

Pranshu Verma, Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2023 The disconcerting part is when people proclaim that generative AI is sentient. —

Lance Eliot, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2023 Google has fired Blake Lemoine, the software engineer who was previously put on paid leave after claiming the company's LaMDA chatbot is sentient. —

Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, 25 July 2022 The project spilled into the public consciousness early last summer when another Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, told The Washington Post that LaMDA was sentient. —

Cade Metz, New York Times, 10 Jan. 2023 If a human would claim to be sentient, the model will too. —

Jason P. Dinh, Discover Magazine, 30 June 2022 Since her rapid rise to prominence during her first campaign for office in 2020, the Georgia congresswoman has made a name for herself as a kind of sentient Facebook page. —

Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 11 Jan. 2023 And this leads to a truly shocking ending where our heroes fail: Skynet becomes sentient and begins launching nukes, wiping out most life across the planet. —

Chris Snellgrove, EW.com, 10 Jan. 2023 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sentient.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.