sapience
English
Etymology
From Middle English sapience, from Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.
Noun
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 895063360, first 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 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554, 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, 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 8.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, OCLC 639975898:
- 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, 1936, p. 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.
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French
Etymology
From Middle French sapience, from Old French sapience, borrowed from Latin sapientia.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /sa.pjɑ̃s/
Audio (file)
Noun
sapience f (plural sapiences)
- wisdom, sapience
Related terms
- savoir
Further reading
- “sapience”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Middle English
Alternative forms
- sapiens, sapiense, sapyence, sapyens
Etymology
From Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˌsaːpiˈɛns(ə)/, /ˈsaːpiɛns(ə)/
Noun
sapience (uncountable)
- wisdom, discernment (especially religious)
- 1478, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" 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.
- 1478, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" 1195-8,
- (One of) the Poetic Books of the Bible.
Descendants
- English: sapience
References
- “sapience, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
Middle French
Etymology
From Old French sapience.
Noun
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.
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Descendants
- French: sapience
Old French
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin sapientia.
Noun
sapience f (oblique plural sapiences, nominative singular sapience, nominative plural sapiences)
- wisdom, sapience
Descendants
- → Middle English: sapience, sapiens, sapiense, sapyence, sapyens
- English: sapience
- Middle French: sapience
- French: sapience