conscious
- 1Awake and alert, with one's mental faculties active.
He remained conscious despite the blow to his head.
Doctors checked whether the injured driver was fully conscious.
Oppositeunconscious, senseless
- 2Aware of and sensitive to something, often with strong interest in or concern about it.
He grew increasingly conscious of the environmental cost of his daily choices.
Voters are more conscious of climate issues than they were a decade ago.
Similaraware, mindful, sensitive, cognizant, alert
Oppositeunaware, oblivious, heedless
Note
The outward-looking sense, and the one that takes a complement: you are conscious of something. It might be a noise behind you, a vague uneasiness in George Orwell, or budgetary constraints in Arthur Smithies's The Budgetary Process in the United States (1955). Joined to a noun with a hyphen, it names a standing concern rather than a passing notice, as in a class-conscious analysis.
- 3Involving a purposeful choice and full awareness of one's actions.
Switching careers was a conscious decision, not an accident.
They put conscious thought into every line of the design.
Similardeliberate, intentional, considered, calculated, purposeful
Oppositeunintentional, involuntary, accidental, unconscious
Note
This meaning describes acts and agents rather than states of mind, and it usually sits directly before its noun: a conscious effort, a conscious decision, a conscious fraud. In Brigham Henry Roberts's Defense of the Faith and the Saints (1907), a conscious fraud is a deliberate deceiver, not a merely mistaken one. Conscious effort is the everyday pairing, as in a resolve to make a conscious effort to be a better person.
- 4Having a sense of one's own existence, including the ability to notice one's own state of awareness.
Like a mind that can stand back and watch itself think.
Philosophers ask at what point a creature becomes truly conscious of itself.
We are conscious beings who can reflect on our own minds.
Similaraware, sentient, self-aware
Oppositeunaware
Note
Here the awareness turns inward. A person is not merely awake, as in the waking sense, but aware of being aware. Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now (1999) stretches the word further. He ranks people as more or less conscious and pairs the word with unconscious as its spiritual opposite. In that usage, a wide-awake person can still be called unconscious, so context tells you which meaning is at work.
- 5
- 6The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the waking, self-aware portion of mental life.
In his model, the conscious holds only what we are currently aware of.
Dreams may let hidden material slip past the conscious.
Similarconsciousness
Oppositeunconscious, subconscious
Less common meaning
- 7Feeling guilty or self-conscious through awareness of one's own wrongdoing.
The thief stood conscious before the judge, unable to hide his guilt.
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 WomenSimilarguilty, shamefaced
Note
The oldest meaning in English, now rare. The word arrived in the late 16th century meaning "aware of wrongdoing," from Latin cōnscius, built from con- "together" and scīre "to know." Jane Austen's Elinor "looked conscious" in Sense and Sensibility (1811), and Louisa May Alcott's aunts wear a conscious look in Little Women (1869). Both mean a caught-out, blushing awareness. In modern writing, use guilty or self-conscious instead.
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Practice
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Origin
First recorded in the late 16th century in the sense 'aware of wrongdoing', from Latin cōnscius ('conscious, conscious of guilt'), which comes from con- (a form of com-, 'together') plus scīre ('to know').