cense

See also: censé

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛns/
• Rhymes: -ɛns
• Homophone: sense

Etymology 1

Backformation from incense

Verb

cense (third-person singular simple present censes, present participle censing, simple past and past participle censed)

1. To perfume with incense.
   • 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     The Salii sing and 'cense his altars round.

   • 1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 205:

     Alternatively he would make a pretty good deacon: tall, well built, with quite a good voice, assiduously censing every nook and cranny, endowed with a certain histrionic talent, and perhaps also a genuine devotion to the service of God.

Translations

to perfume with incense

• Bulgarian: кадя (bg) (kadja)
• Dutch: bewieroken (nl)
• Finnish: suitsuttaa (fi)
• French: encenser (fr)
• Ido: incensagar (io)

Etymology 2

Old French cense, French cens, Latin census.

Noun

cense (plural censes)

1. (obsolete) A census.
   • 1657, Jam. Howel [i.e., James Howell], “A Parallel, by Way of Corollary, betwixt London, and Other Great Cities of the World”, in Londinopolis; an Historicall Discourse or Perlustration of the City of London, the Imperial Chamber, and Chief Emporium of Great Britain: […], London: […] J[ohn] Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, […], →OCLC, page 403:

     [I]n the year 1636, King Charles ſending to the Lord Mayor [of London], to make a ſcrutiny, vvhat number of Roman Catholiques and ſtrangers, there vvere in the City, he took occaſion thereby, to make a Cenſe of all the people; and there vvere of Men, VVomen, and Children, above ſeven hundred thouſand that lived vvithin the Barres of his juriſdiction alone; […]

2. (obsolete) A public rate or tax.
   • a. 1626, Francis Bacon, A Certificate to His Majesty […] Touching the Penal Laws:

     as moneys a sum in name of a cense so returned

3. (obsolete) condition; rank
   • 1641, Ben Jonson, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter‎^[1]:

     if you write to a man, whose estate and cense as senses, you are familiar with, you may the bolder (to let a taske to his braine) venter on a knot

References

“cense”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• cenes, scene, sence

Latin

Verb

cēnsē

1. second-person singular present active imperative of cēnseō

Old Irish

Noun

cense f (genitive cense, no plural)

1. Alternative spelling of censae

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
cense	chense	cense pronounced with /ɡ(ʲ)-/
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Spanish

Verb

cense

1. inflection of censar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative