Dictionary

sapience en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈseɪpɪəns/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˈseɪpjəns/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˈseɪpjəns/ (General-American)
• /ˈseɪpiəns/ (General-American)

Etymology

From Middle English sapience, from Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The property of being sapient, the property of possessing or being able to possess wisdom.
   • As, much Experience, is Prudence; ſo, is much Science, Sapience. 1651, Thomas Hobbes, chapter V, in Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, London: […] [William Wilson] for Andrew Crooke, […], →OCLC, 1st part (Of Man), page 22:
   • Mean while the Son / On his great Expedition now appeer'd, / Girt with Omnipotence, with Radiance crown'd / Of Majestie Divine, Sapience and Love / Immense, and all his Father in him shon. 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 192–196:
   • Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience, primitive in its kind, saw or thought it saw something which, in contrast with the war-ship's environment, looked oddly incongruous in the Handsome Sailor? 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter VIII.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC:
   • This, a solo of sapience, / This, a chantey of sophistry, / This, the sum of experiments— / I loved them until they loved me. 1926, Dorothy Parker, “Ballade at Thirty-Five”, in The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker, New York: The Modern Library, published 1936, page 60:
   • I then marked out three ways in which we can instead describe and demarcate ourselves in terms of the sapience that distinguishes us from the beasts of forest and field. 2009, Robert Brandom, Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas:
   • In Europe it’s too dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the verbosity, the long disquisitions on superannuated subjects. 1886 [1882], Henry James, The Point of View, London: Macmillan and Co.:

Forms

Coordinates

sentience

Deriveds

insipience

Translations (1)

es sapiencia (Translations)