Word.ws English Dictionary

conscious

UK/ˈkɒn.ʃəs//ˈkɑn.ʃəs/

conscious adjective: alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.

Adjective

conscious (comparative more conscious, superlative most conscious)

  1. Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.
    • The noise woke me, but it was another few minutes before I was fully conscious.
  2. Aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness.
    • The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious.1999, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Hodder and Stoughton, pages 61–62
    • Only highly intelligent beings can be fully conscious.
  3. Aware of, sensitive to; observing and noticing, or being strongly interested in or concerned about.
    • I was conscious of a noise behind me. a very class-conscious analysis
    • Here, in the transept and choir, where the service was being held, one was conscious every moment of an increasing brightness; colours glowing vividly beneath the circular chandeliers, and the rows of small lights on the choristers' desks flashed and sparkled in front of the boys' faces, deep linen...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  4. Deliberate, intentional, done with awareness of what one is doing.
    • He candidly confesses that it is an effort to account for Joseph Smith upon some other hypothesis than that he was a conscious fraud, bent on deceiving mankind.1907, Brigham Henry Roberts, Defense of the Faith and the Saints, volume 1, page 43
    • Start fresh, try and learn from past mistakes, make a conscious effort to be a better person.2015, Jamie Kornegay, Soil: A Novel, page 214
  5. Known or felt personally, internally by a person.
    • conscious guilt
  6. (rare) Self-conscious, or aware of wrongdoing, feeling guilty.
    • He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary glance at Elinor, replied, “Yes; it is my sister’s hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know.” Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise..1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XVIII, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume I, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 229
    • They found Aunt Carrol with the old lady, both absorbed in some very interesting subject ; but they dropped it as the girls came in, with a conscious look which betrayed that they had been talking about their nieces.1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, Little Women: […], 2nd part, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC

Noun

conscious (plural consciouses)

  1. The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the consciousness.

conscious meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

conscious in Hindi

alert, awake
सचेत sacet
aware of or alert to, sensitive to
जागरूक jāgrūk

conscious in Tamil

உணர்வு, நினைவு, ஞாபகம்

conscious in Marathi

conscious, enlightened
जागरूक jāgrūk
conscious
सावध sāvadh

conscious in Urdu

conscious, enlightened
بیدار bedār
More languagesFewer languages
conscious in Bengali
সচেতন, সজ্ঞান, চেতন, পরিজ্ঞাত
conscious in Malayalam
അറിവുളള, ബോധമുള്ള, ജ്ഞാനമുള്ള
conscious in Kannada
ಅರಿವಿರುವ, ತಿಳಿದಿರುವ, ಪ್ರಜ್ಞೆ ಇರುವ, ಜಾಗೃತ
conscious in Punjabi
ਚੇਤੰਨ
conscious in Gujarati
સભાન
conscious in Tagalog
maymalay

Examples of conscious in a sentence

  • Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness.1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […]...
  • Furthermore, the military operator is far less conscious of budgetary constraints than is the civilian consumer.1955, Arthur Smithies, The Budgetary Process in the United States, page 290:

All 40 example sentences with conscious

Synonyms of conscious

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of conscious

Forms of conscious

Adjective
comparativemore conscious
superlativemost conscious
Noun
pluralconsciouses

Origin of conscious

First use appears c. 1573 in the sense of "aware of wrongdoing".https://web.archive.org/web/20220714064352/https://www.lexico.com/definition/conscious From Latin cōnscius (“conscious, conscious of guilt”), itself from con- (a form of com- (“together”)) + scīre (“to know”) + -us.

Words formed from conscious

Phrases with conscious

Questions about conscious

What does conscious mean?
Conscious means alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.
What is conscious in Hindi?
Conscious in Hindi is सचेत (sacet), जागरूक (jāgrūk). See Conscious meaning in Hindi.
How do you use conscious in a sentence?
Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness.
What part of speech is conscious?
Conscious can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce conscious?
Conscious is pronounced /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ (US).

Words near conscious in the dictionary

  1. conscionable
  2. conscionableness
  3. conscionably
  4. conscioned
  5. conscions
  6. conscious
  7. conscious and oriented
  8. conscious automatism
  9. conscious hip hop
  10. conscious parallelism
  11. conscious rap

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: conscious (page history and authors); conscious (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); जागरूक (Marathi) (page history and authors); بیدار (Urdu) (page history and authors); conscious (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); conscious (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); conscious (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); conscious (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); conscious (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-conscious.ogg.

Cite this entry: “conscious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/conscious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.