cense
/sɛns/
cense verb: to perfume with incense.
Verb
cense (third-person singular simple present censes, present participle censing, simple past and past participle censed)
- To perfume with incense.
- The Salii sing and 'cense his altars round.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
- 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.1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 205
Noun
cense (plural censes)
- A census.
- [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...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...
- A public rate or tax.
- as moneys a sum in name of a cense so returneda. 1626, Francis Bacon, A Certificate to His Majesty […] Touching the Penal Laws
- condition; rank
- 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 knot1641, Ben Jonson, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter
Forms of cense
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | censes |
| present participle | censing |
| past participle | censed |
| past | censed |
| Noun | |
| plural | censes |
Origin of cense
Apheretic form of incense.
Old French cense, French cens, Latin census.
Words that rhyme with cense
Questions about cense
- What does cense mean?
- Cense means to perfume with incense.
- What part of speech is cense?
- Cense can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce cense?
- Cense is pronounced /sɛns/.
- What is the past tense of cense?
- The past tense of cense is censed.
Words near cense in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cense (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “cense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.