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Lexicon.

intuition

noun [ˌɪntuˈɪʃən]
pronunciation CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, open source

Intuition is knowing or judging something at once, without conscious reasoning, and the hunch that arrives that way.

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Definitions

  1. The ability to understand or know something straight away, without conscious reasoning or step-by-step proof.
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  2. A particular belief or hunch reached in this way, often felt to be true before it can be explained.
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Examples

Usage

Intuition is neutral in register and appears both in careful writing and in conversation. In philosophical and psychological texts it names a mode of knowing, in business writing it often means a judgement made quickly by an experienced person. The word carries a slight defence in ordinary speech, as in I went with my intuition, where it explains a decision that cannot be argued from evidence.

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The usual patterns are trust your intuition, follow your intuition and by intuition, and the noun also takes a possessive: her intuition told her, my intuition was right. It is countable: a strong intuition, an intuition that something was wrong, several intuitions about the same case. Strong, first, initial and reliable are the adjectives most often found in front of it.

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Intuition differs from instinct in that instinct usually names a fixed, unlearned response, while intuition can be trained by experience. It also differs from a hunch, which is a single guess with no claim to reliability; intuition may be a lasting capacity rather than one impression. The label is stretched too far when it covers any opinion held without evidence.

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Word forms

Regular forms according to English morphology (editorial description).

word forms

przypadek forma
singular intuition
plural intuitions

Word forms: Editorial team

Collocations

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms instinct, hunch, insight
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Antonyms reasoning
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Etymology

From Middle French intuition, formed by analogy with tuition and allied to Latin intuitus, past participle of intueri “to look upon”, from in “upon” and tueri “to look”. Skeat glosses the word as “a looking into, ready power of perception” and notes that Bishop Taylor used it in the sense of “looking upon”; the adjective intuitive appears in Cotgrave and in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
source W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open source

Related words

Related entries

Questions and answers

What does intuition mean?

Intuition names the capacity to reach a sound conclusion immediately, skipping the visible steps of reasoning and arriving without a proof the person could set out. It also covers the conclusion itself, the sense that something is true before any argument for it can be given.

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Is intuition countable?

It is countable when it means a single judgement: a strong intuition, my first intuition, several intuitions. It is used without an article when the capacity is meant: she works by intuition, he trusts his intuition. Both patterns are standard, and the context of the sentence usually makes clear which sense is at work.

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What is the difference between intuition and instinct?

Instinct is usually an unlearned response that the species carries, while intuition can be sharpened by experience and by time spent in a field. A surgeon’s sense that something is wrong in an operating theatre is intuition rather than instinct, because it rests on years of cases that the surgeon cannot lay out in words.

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Where does the word intuition come from?

Latin intuitus is the past participle of intueri, to look upon, formed from in and tueri, to look. Skeat gives the sense of a looking into, that is, a ready power of perception, and shows Bishop Taylor using the word for plain looking at something. Middle French carried the form into English.

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