Word.ws English Dictionary

kinesthesia

US/ˌkɪnɪsˈθiʒə/

kinesthesia noun: sensation or perception of motion.

Noun

kinesthesia (countable and uncountable, plural kinesthesias)

  1. Sensation or perception of motion.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:kinesthesia.
    1. The perception of the movement of one's own body, its limbs and muscles etc.
    2. (performing arts) A spectator's perception of the motion of a performer, or, the effect of the motion of a scene on the spectator.
  2. Proprioception or static position sense; the perception of the position and posture of the body; also, more broadly, including the motion of the body as well. See usage notes below.

Synonyms of kinesthesia

Forms of kinesthesia

pluralkinesthesias
alternative formkinaesthesia
alternative formkinæsthesia

Origin of kinesthesia

From kine- + -esthesia. Compare kinesthesis and Greek κιναισθησία (kinaisthisía). Notes If this word were borrowed on fully traditional principles it would be cinesthesia (or cinaesthesia); compare cinema from the same root. But more often this Greek root is spelled and pronounced with a k, and in the case of kinesthesia this avoids inconvenient homophony with synaesthesia, the sensation of one type of perception as another (e.g. the perception of smells as colors). Nevertheless the words are still occasionally confused; e.g. http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0849303710&id=_u4sZjHHwCYC&pg=PA581&lpg=PA581&dq=cinesthesia&sig=gFEo5BGoW75XcUVTk44aHGKgGuc.

Words formed from kinesthesia

Questions about kinesthesia

What does kinesthesia mean?
Kinesthesia means sensation or perception of motion.
What part of speech is kinesthesia?
Kinesthesia is a noun.
How do you pronounce kinesthesia?
Kinesthesia is pronounced /ˌkɪnɪsˈθiʒə/ (US).
What is the plural of kinesthesia?
The plural of kinesthesia is kinesthesias.

Words near kinesthesia in the dictionary

  1. kinespheres
  2. kinessence
  3. kinestases
  4. kinestasis
  5. kinestheses
  6. kinesthesia
  7. kinesthesias
  8. kinesthesic
  9. kinesthesiologist
  10. kinesthesiologists
  11. kinesthesiology

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kinesthesia (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kinesthesia.wav.

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