instinct

Pluralinstincts

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An inborn, natural impulse or pattern of behavior that arises without being learned.

   Salmon return to their birth streams driven by instinct alone.

   A mother's instinct told her something was wrong with the baby.

   Similarintuition, impulse, urge, drive, nature

   Note

   Behind the word is a goad: Latin instinctus, 'incited', from a verb built on stinguō, 'to prick'. An instinct is what prods a creature from inside before it has learned anything. Bertrand Russell, in The Analysis of Mind (1921), set it against habit, which has to be acquired. The usual frame is by instinct: animals fear fire by instinct, and Shakespeare's men mistrust danger 'by a divine instinct'.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A reaction or judgment that arises intuitively, without being based on conscious, rational thought.

   The veteran detective followed instinct rather than the available evidence.

   Her first instinct was to apologize, though she had done nothing wrong.

   Similarintuition, impulse, hunch, feeling

   Oppositereason

   Note

   Here the instinct belongs to one person rather than to a whole species, and two constructions carry it. An instinct for something is a knack or feel, as in an instinct for order. Someone's instinct was to do something names a first, unreasoned impulse in a particular moment: Debbie's instinct was to distrust John. Modest by instinct sits close to the inborn drive. The difference is whether you mean a creature's nature or one person's temperament.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Filled with, imbued with, or charged with some quality, feeling, or animating force.

   The poem was instinct with a quiet, restrained grief.

   a noble performance, instinct with sound principle

   1838, Henry Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III

   Note

   An archaic adjective kept alive in literary prose, and almost always followed by with. Milton's chariot is 'instinct with spirit', and John Buchan's moors in 1899 are 'a place instinct with tragedy'. It keeps the Latin participle's sense of being stirred from within, the same root behind the inborn drive. Read it as 'filled with', not as anything to do with intuition.

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