conscience
Pluralconsciences
- 1A person's inner sense of right and wrong, especially as it shapes how they judge their own behavior and past actions.
His conscience would not let him keep the extra change the cashier had mistakenly given him.
After weeks of guilt, her conscience finally pushed her to confess what she had done.
Similarprinciples, scruples
Note
The word comes from Latin conscientia, "knowledge within oneself," built from com- "together" and scire "to know." The Latin verb already carried a sense of being conscious of wrong. Several fixed phrases are worth knowing. People speak of a good conscience. They act against conscience, with no article, as in Einstein's advice. They also act for conscience' sake, which takes a bare apostrophe in Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1951).
- 2A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, often appearing as a character, a being, or simply a voice that offers moral guidance.
Throughout the play, the hero's conscience appears as a hooded figure who questions each of his choices.
The novel personifies her conscience as a quiet voice that grows louder whenever she strays from doing good.
Note
Storytellers use this as a device rather than a faculty. Once the moral sense is given a body or a voice, it can speak, argue and be ignored like any other character. Critics of fiction and narrative use the word for the figure that shadows a hero, sometimes as an allegorical character. Unlike the inner moral sense, it is naturally something one meets, so it readily takes a or the.
- 3The faculty of consciousness or thinking; awareness, especially a person's awareness of their own self.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”Note
An older, broader meaning survives here. It means simply knowing one's own mind, which the Latin "knowledge within oneself" behind the moral sense equally allows. In Shakespeare's Hamlet (c. 1599–1602), "conscience does make cowards of us all" stands beside "the pale cast of thought." Read this way, the line blames thinking, not guilt. Today, use consciousness or awareness instead and leave this meaning to older texts.
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Origin
This word came into Middle English from Old French conscience, from Latin conscientia ("knowledge within oneself"). That noun derives from conscire ("to know, to be conscious of wrong"), formed from com- ("together") plus scire ("to know").