sentience

\sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\

/\sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\/ noun

The verdict

“sentience” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency French
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Capacité d'un être vivant à ressentir, à avoir des émotions et des expériences subjectives.

Corpus desk

Index FR-sentience · sentience · French

sentience · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "S" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for sentience
PropertyValue
Headwordsentience
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « sentience » en français

sentiencesiège au-delà des 100.000 formes les plus fréquentes du français, dans la traîne du lexique spécialisé ou peu usité.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

sentience is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Capacité d'un être vivant à ressentir, à avoir des émotions et des expériences subjectives.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for sentience in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is sentience, spelled S-E-N-T-I-E-N-C-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Capacité d'un être vivant à ressentir, à avoir des émotions et des expériences subjectives.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how sentience appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Ce mot [sentience] est entré au Larousse en 2020. Sentience vient du latin sentiens (ressentant) : pour un être vivant, capacité à ressentir les émotions, la douleur, le bien-être et à percevoir de façon subjective son environnement et ses expériences de vie.
  2. Il y a différentiabilité de la sentience vers la sapience, mais pas de la sapience vers la sentience. Le continuum quasi différentiable sentience-sapience entre en résonance avec le schéma proposé par Wilfrid Sellars de la réductibilité causale avec irréductibilité logique.

Synonyms

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "sentience"?
"sentience" is spelled S-E-N-T-I-E-N-C-E. The IPA pronunciation is \sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\.
What does "sentience" mean?
As a noun, "sentience" means: Capacité d'un être vivant à ressentir, à avoir des émotions et des expériences subjectives.
How do you pronounce "sentience"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "sentience" is \sɑ̃.tjɑ̃s\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "sentience" come from?
"sentience" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list