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COMMON SENSE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Sound practical judgment
Example:
fortunately she had the good sense to run away
Synonyms:
common sense; good sense; gumption; horse sense; mother wit; sense
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("common sense" is a kind of...):
discernment; judgement; judgment; sagaciousness; sagacity (the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "common sense"):
logic (reasoned and reasonable judgment)
nous (common sense)
road sense (good judgment in avoiding trouble or accidents on the road)
Derivation:
commonsensical (exhibiting native good judgment)
Context examples:
Miss Morrison is a little, ethereal slip of a girl, with timid eyes and blonde hair, but I found her by no means wanting in shrewdness and common sense.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
When Amy had whetted her tongue and freed her mind she usually got the best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side, while Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her were it known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her go.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
No, you men never do consider economy and common sense.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But I have long thought Mr. Bertram one of the worst subjects to work on, in any little manoeuvre against common sense, that a woman could be plagued with.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
To barge blindly into it for want of a little common sense and patience isn't my notion of management.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
They proved that a seal pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
