sapience
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English sapience, from Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.
Pronunciation edit
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈseɪpiəns/, /ˈseɪpjəns/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈseɪpɪəns/, /ˈseɪpjəns/
Noun edit
sapience (usually uncountable, plural sapiences)
- The property of being sapient, the property of possessing or being able to possess wisdom.
- 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:
- As, much Experience, is Prudence; ſo, is much Science, Sapience.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 192–196:
- 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.
- 1886 [1882], Henry James, The Point of View[1], London: Macmillan and Co.:
- In Europe it’s too dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the verbosity, the long disquisitions on superannuated subjects.
- 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter VIII.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC:
- 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?
- 1926, Dorothy Parker, “Ballade at Thirty-Five”, in The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker, New York: The Modern Library, published 1936, page 60:
- This, a solo of sapience, / This, a chantey of sophistry, / This, the sum of experiments— / I loved them until they loved me.
- 2009, Robert Brandom, Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas:
- 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.
Coordinate terms edit
French edit
Etymology edit
Inherited from Middle French sapience, from Old French sapience, borrowed from Latin sapientia.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
sapience f (plural sapiences)
Related terms edit
Further reading edit
- “sapience”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Middle English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
sapience (uncountable)
- wisdom, discernment (especially religious)
- 1478, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath's Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales[2], 1195-8:
- Povert is hateful good, and, as I gesse, / A ful greet bringer out of bisinesse; / A greet amender eek of sapience / To him that taketh it in pacience.
- (please add an English translation of this quotation)
- (One of) the Poetic Books of the Bible.
Descendants edit
- English: sapience
References edit
- “sapience, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
Middle French edit
Etymology edit
From Old French sapience.
Noun edit
sapience f (plural sapiences)
- wisdom, sapience
- 1534, François Rabelais, Gargantua:
- car leur sçavoir n'estoit que besterie et leur sapience n'estoit que moufles
- for their knowledge was just nonsense and their wisdom was just waffle.
Descendants edit
- French: sapience
Old French edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Latin sapientia.
Noun edit
sapience oblique singular, f (oblique plural sapiences, nominative singular sapience, nominative plural sapiences)