sapience

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

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

Noun[edit]

sapience (usually uncountable, plural sapiences)

  1. 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.

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Inherited from Middle French sapience, from Old French sapience, borrowed from Latin sapientia.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /sa.pjɑ̃s/
  • (file)

Noun[edit]

sapience f (plural sapiences)

  1. wisdom, sapience

Related terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Middle English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /ˌsaːpiˈɛns(ə)/, /ˈsaːpiɛns(ə)/

Noun[edit]

sapience (uncountable)

  1. wisdom, discernment (especially religious)
  2. (One of) the Poetic Books of the Bible.

Descendants[edit]

  • English: sapience

References[edit]

Middle French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French sapience.

Noun[edit]

sapience f (plural sapiences)

  1. 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]

Old French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from Latin sapientia.

Noun[edit]

sapience f (oblique plural sapiences, nominative singular sapience, nominative plural sapiences)

  1. wisdom, sapience

Descendants[edit]