 |
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Experience \Ex*pe"ri*ence\ ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*ens), noun [F. exp['e]rience, L. experientia, tr. experiens, experientis, p. pr. of experiri, expertus, to try; ex out + the root of peritus experienced. See {Peril}, and cf. {Expert}.]
1. Trial, as a test or experiment. [Obs.]
She caused him to make experience Upon wild beasts. --Spenser.
2. The effect upon the judgment or feelings produced by any event, whether witnessed or participated in; personal and direct impressions as contrasted with description or fancies; personal acquaintance; actual enjoyment or suffering. ''Guided by other's experiences.'' --Shak.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. --P. Henry
To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed. --Coleridge.
When the consuls . . . came in . . . they knew soon by experience how slenderly guarded against danger the majesty of rulers is where force is wanting. --Holland.
Those that undertook the religion of our Savior upon his preaching, had no experience of it. --Sharp.
3. An act of knowledge, one or more, by which single facts or general truths are ascertained; experimental or inductive knowledge; hence, implying skill, facility, or practical wisdom gained by personal knowledge, feeling or action; as, a king without experience of war.
Whence hath the mind all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience. --Locke.
Experience may be acquired in two ways; either, first by noticing facts without any attempt to influence the frequency of their occurrence or to vary the circumstances under which they occur; this is observation; or, secondly, by putting in action causes or agents over which we have control, and purposely varying their combinations, and noticing what effects take place; this is experiment. --Sir J. Herschel.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Experience \Ex*pe"ri*ence\, verb (used with an object) [imp. & p. p. {Experienced} ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*enst); p. pr. & vb. n. {Experiencing} ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*en*s[i^]ng).]
1. To make practical acquaintance with; to try personally; to prove by use or trial; to have trial of; to have the lot or fortune of; to have befall one; to be affected by; to feel; as, to experience pain or pleasure; to experience poverty; to experience a change of views.
The partial failure and disappointment which he had experienced in India. --Thirwall.
2. To exercise; to train by practice.
The youthful sailors thus with early care Their arms experience, and for sea prepare. --Harte.
{To experience religion} (Theol.), to become a convert to the doctrines of Christianity; to yield to the power of religious truth.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
experience
noun
1: the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities; "a man of experience"; "experience is the best teacher" [ant: {inexperience}]
2: the content of direct observation or participation in an event; "he had a religious experience"; "he recalled the experience vividly"
3: an event as apprehended; "a surprising experience"; "that painful experience certainly got our attention"
verb
1: go or live through; "We had many trials to go through"; "he saw action in Viet Nam" [syn: {undergo}, {see}, {go through}]
2: have firsthand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or sensations; "I know the feeling!"; "have you ever known hunger?"; "I have lived a kind of hell when I was a drug addict"; "The holocaust survivors have lived a nightmare"; "I lived through two divorces" [syn: {know}, {live}]
3: of mental or physical states or experiences; "get an idea"; "experience vertigo"; "get nauseous"; "undergo a strange sensation"; "The chemical undergoes a sudden change"; "The fluid undergoes shear"; "receive injuries"; "have a feeling" [syn: {receive}, {have}, {get}, {undergo}]
4: undergo an emotional sensation; "She felt resentful"; "He felt regret" [syn: {feel}]
5: undergo; "The stocks had a fast run-up" [syn: {have}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
136 Moby Thesaurus words for "experience": accept, acquaintance, adventure, affair, affect, affection, apprehend, awareness, background, be aware of, be conscious of, be exposed to, be sensible of, be subjected to, behold, blaseness, circumstance, common sense, consciousness, contact, corpus, data, datum, emotion, emotional charge, emotional shade, encounter, endure, episode, event, expertise, exposure, face, fact, facts, factual base, familiarity, feel, feel deeply, feeling, feeling tone, foreboding, go through, gut reaction, hap, happening, happenstance, have, have a sensation, hear, heartthrob, impression, incident, information, intelligence, intimacy, involvement, inwardness, judgement, ken, know, know-how, knowing, knowledge, labor under, live through, matter of fact, meet, meet up with, meet with, observation, occasion, occurrence, ordeal, participation, particular, pass through, passion, past experience, pay, perceive, percept, perception, phenomenon, practical knowledge, practice, presentiment, private knowledge, privity, profound sense, ratio cognoscendi, reaction, reality, receive, receive an impression, respond, respond to stimuli, response, response to stimuli, run up against, sagacity, sample, savoir faire, savor, savvy, seasoning, see, self-knowledge, sensation, sense, sense impression, sense perception, sensory experience, sentiment, skill, smell, sophistication, spend, stand under, suffer, survey, sustain, taste, technic, technics, technique, tempering, test, touch, trial, turn of events, undercurrent, undergo, view, wisdom, worldly wisdom
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
EXPERIENCE, noun The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
To one who, journeying through night and fog, Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog, Experience, like the rising of the dawn, Reveals the path that he should not have gone. Joel Frad Bink
 |
Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |