You may have guessed that sentient has something to do with the senses. The initial spelling sent- or sens- is often a giveaway for such a meaning. A sentient being is one who perceives and responds to sensations of whatever kind—sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Sentient ultimately comes from the Latin verb sentire, which means "to feel" or "to perceive," and is related to the noun sensus, meaning "sense." A few related English words are sentiment and sentimental, which have to do with emotions, sensual, which relates to more physical sensations, and the trio of assent, consent, and dissent, which involve one's expressions of agreement (or disagreement in the case of dissent) in thought and feeling with another.
sentient of the danger posed by the approaching hurricane
Recent Examples on the WebDavid Duchovny still wants to believe with his latest project — Kepler — an original graphic novel about sentient life amongst the stars. Josh Weiss, Forbes, 7 June 2022 The engineer continues to insist that the program is sentient. Lance Eliot, Forbes, 26 Aug. 2022 Google engineer Blake Lemoine was recently fired after publicly warning that a chatbot powered by the technology, called LaMDA, might be sentient.Wired, 18 Aug. 2022 Even now some people don’t consider nonhuman animals to be sentient, let alone possessing any real intelligence. Camilo Garzón, Scientific American, 10 Aug. 2022 There is no evidence this technology is sentient or conscious — two words that describe an awareness of the surrounding world.New York Times, 5 Aug. 2022 Given that this is a show about immortal, sentient robots, death means relatively little in Westworld. Paul Tassi, Forbes, 1 Aug. 2022 In Stranger Things 4, the Hawkins heroes faced off against Vecna, demon bats, sentient tentacles, and a lethally misguided United States military for nine episodes. Keith Nelson, Men's Health, 5 July 2022 Pluto TV continuously loops the programming around the clock in a linear feed for fans of the shape-shifting, sentient alien robots who are perennially locked in a battle for the future of their world — and ours. Todd Spangler, Variety, 13 June 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel