Conscience or conscious?
conscience is a noun meaning “The ethical or moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects a person’s…”; conscious is an adjective meaning “Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active”. Use conscience as a noun and conscious as an adjective (conscious is also a noun: “The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the…”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) conscious is about 1.7 times as common as conscience.
What is the difference between conscience and conscious?
| conscience | conscious | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | adjective, noun |
| Meaning | The ethical or moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects a person’s own behaviour and forms their attitude to their past actions A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, usually in the form of a person, a being or merely a voice that gives moral lessons and advices | Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active Aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the consciousness |
| Example | Your conscience is your highest authority | The noise woke me, but it was another few minutes before I was fully conscious |
| Forms | consciences | none |
| Pronunciation | /ˈkɒn.ʃəns/ /ˈkɒn.tʃəns/ /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/ | /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ /ˈkɒn.ʃəs/ /ˈkɒntʃəs/ |
| In writing | 9.1 times per million words | 15 times per million words |
Sources: conscience and conscious in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of conscience and conscious
conscience
- 1
The ethical or moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects a person’s own behaviour and forms their attitude to their past actions
Your conscience is your highest authority
- 2
A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, usually in the form of a person, a being or merely a voice that gives moral lessons and advices
conscious
- 1
Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active
The noise woke me, but it was another few minutes before I was fully conscious
- 2
The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the consciousness
- 3
Aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness
Only highly intelligent beings can be fully conscious
- 4
Aware of, sensitive to; observing and noticing, or being strongly interested in or concerned about
I was conscious of a noise behind me. a very class-conscious analysis
- 5
Deliberate, intentional, done with awareness of what one is doing
- 6
Known or felt personally, internally by a person
conscious guilt
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, conscience or conscious?
conscience appears 9.1 times per million words; conscious 15 times per million words.
conscience 9.1 times per million wordsconscious 15 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search conscience vs conscious?
“conscience vs conscious” is searched about 6,600 times a month on Google and 490 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“conscious vs conscience”, “conscience or conscious”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.