| senium | Rarely used term for old age; especially the debility of advanced age. Origin: L. The feebleness of age, fr. Seneo, to be old, feeble (05 Mar 2000) |
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| senna | 1. <medicine> The leaves of several leguminous plants of the genus Cassia. (C. Acutifolia. C. Angustifolia, etc). They constitute a valuable but nauseous cathartic medicine. 2. <botany> The plants themselves, native to the East, but now cultivated largely in the south of Europe and in the West Indies. Bladder senna. <botany> The Cassia Marilandica, growing in the United States, the leaves of which are used medicinally, like those of the officinal senna. Origin: Cf. It. & Sp. Sena, Pg. Sene, F. Sene; all fr. Ar. Sana. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sennet | <zoology> The barracuda. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| Sennetsu fever | A disease of man in western Japan caused by the rickettsia Ehrlichia sennetsu and characterised by fever, malaise, anorexia, backache, and lymphadenopathy. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Senning operation | An atrial switch operation for patients with transposition of the great arteries that employs a septal flap instead of excising the atrial septum as in the Mustard operation, thus minimizing foreign material and allowing for growth. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sennoside A | Sennoside B Two anthraquinone glucosides that are the laxative principles of senna. (05 Mar 2000) |
| senonian | <geology> In european geology, a name given to the middle division of the Upper Cretaceous formation. Origin: F. Senonien, from the district of Senonais, in France. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sensate | Able to perceive touch and other sensations; used in reference to patients who have had partial nerve or spinal cord injuries. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sensation | 1. <physiology> An impression, or the consciousness of an impression, made upon the central nervous organ, through the medium of a sensory or afferent nerve or one of the organs of sense; a feeling, or state of consciousness, whether agreeable or disagreeable, produced either by an external object (stimulus), or by some change in the internal state of the body. "Perception is only a special kind of knowledge, and sensation a special kind of feeling. . . . Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensation, though always coexistent, are always in the inverse ratio of each other." (Sir W. Hamilton) 2. A purely spiritual or psychical affection; agreeable or disagreeable feelings occasioned by objects that are not corporeal or material. 3. A state of excited interest or feeling, or that which causes it. "The sensation caused by the appearance of that work is still remembered by many." (Brougham) Synonym: Perception. Sensation, Perseption. The distinction between these words, when used in mental philosophy, may be thus stated; if I simply smell a rose, I have a sensation; if I refer that smell to the external object which occasioned it, I have a perception. Thus, the former is mere feeling, without the idea of an object; the latter is the mind's apprehension of some external object as occasioning that feeling. "Sensation properly expresses that change in the state of the mind which is produced by an impression upon an organ of sense (of which change we can conceive the mind to be conscious, without any knowledge of external objects). Perception, on the other hand, expresses the knowledge or the intimations we obtain by means of our sensations concerning the qualities of matter, and consequently involves, in every instance, the notion of externality, or outness, which it is necessary to exclude in order to seize the precise import of the word sensation." . Origin: Cf. F. Sensation. See Sensate. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sensation disorders | Disorders in the physical response to external or internal stimuli to the senses. (12 Dec 1998) |
| sensation time | The minimal time a visual image must be exposed in order to be perceived. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sensationalism | 1. <psychology> The doctrine held by Condillac, and by some ascribed to Locke, that our ideas originate solely in sensation, and consist of sensations transformed; sensualism; opposed to intuitionalism, and rationalism. 2. The practice or methods of sensational writing or speaking; as, the sensationalism of a novel. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sensationalist | 1. <psychology> An advocate of, or believer in, philosophical sensationalism. 2. One who practices sensational writing or speaking. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sense | 1. <physiology> A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. See Muscular sense, under Muscular, and Temperature sense. "Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep." (Shak) "What surmounts the reach Of human sense I shall delineate." (Milton) "The traitor Sense recalls The soaring soul from rest." (Keble) 2. Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling. "In a living creature, though never so great, the sense and the affects of any one part of the body instantly make a transcursion through the whole." (Bacon) 3. Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation. "This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover." (Sir P. Sidney) "High disdain from sense of injured merit." (Milton) 4. Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning. "He speaks sense." "He raves; his words are loose As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense." (Dryden) 5. That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion. "I speak my private but impartial sense With freedom." (Roscommon) "The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens." (Macaulay) 6. Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a remark. "So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense." (Neh. Viii. 8) "I think 't was in another sense." (Shak) 7. Moral perception or appreciation. "Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no sense of the most friendly offices." (L' Estrange) 8. <geometry> One of two opposite directions in which a line, surface, or volume, may be supposed to be described by the motion of a point, line, or surface. Common sense, according to Sir W. Hamilton: "The complement of those cognitions or convictions which we receive from nature, which all men possess in common, and by which they test the truth of knowledge and the morality of actions." "The faculty of first principles." These two are the philosophical significations. "Such ordinary complement of intelligence, that,if a person be deficient therein, he is accounted mad or foolish." When the substantive is emphasized: "Native practical intelligence, natural prudence, mother wit, tact in behavior, acuteness in the observation of character, in contrast to habits of acquired learning or of speculation." Moral sense. See Moral, . The inner, or internal, sense, capacity of the mind to be aware of its own states; consciousness; reflection. "This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense." . <anatomy> Sense capsule, one of the modified epithelial cells in or near which the fibres of the sensory nerves terminate. Synonym: Understanding, reason. Sense, Understanding, Reason. Some philosophers have given a technical signification to these terms, which may here be stated. Sense is the mind's acting in the direct cognition either of material objects or of its own mental states. In the first case it is called the outer, in the second the inner, sense. Understanding is the logical faculty, i. E, the power of apprehending under general conceptions, or the power of classifying, arranging, and making deductions. Reason is the power of apprehending those first or fundamental truths or principles which are the conditions of all real and scientific knowledge, and which control the mind in all its processes of investigation and deduction. These distinctions are given, not as established, but simply because they often occur in writers of the present day. Origin: L. Sensus, from sentire, sensum, to perceive, to feel, from the same root as E. Send; cf. OHG. Sin sense, mind, sinnan to go, to journey, G. Sinnen to meditate, to think: cf. F. Sens. For the change of meaning cf. See, See Send, and cf. Assent, Consent, Scent, Sentence, Sentient. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sense of equilibrium | The sense that makes possible a normal physiologic posture. Synonym: static sense. (05 Mar 2000) |