sapient
/ˈseɪpɪənt
/adjective
1 formal Wise, or attempting to appear wise: members of the female quarter were more sapient but no less savage than the others...
- At the very far end of the rostrum one could just discern a tribunal of sapient figures seated around a table.
- This may sound extremely unfair to our esteemed police force, to the hardworking prosecutors at the Attorney General's Office and the sapient judges who preside over our courts.
- One thing though, I'd never before so personally perceived nature's absolute mastery at using the unwitting collaboration of its sapient members to mimic its fungal elements.
1.1(Chiefly in science fiction) intelligent: sapient life forms...
- In the wake of their travels, they have left half of the galaxy devoid of sapient life, primarily through the use of their Marauder starships.
2Relating to the human species (Homo sapiens): our sapient ancestors of 40,000 years ago...
- Perhaps in a brief quiet contemplation that this same view was experienced by our modern sapient ancestors over 164,000 years ago.
noun
A human of the species Homo sapiens.As for my fellow sapients, I have no desire to control their actions.
Derivatives
sapience
/ noun ...- With much sapience, he ruled that the categorical imperative of the situation was that charity begins at home and the guilty party must pay for his own beer that evening.
- As much experience is prudence, so is much science sapience.
- Of course, this suggestion will seem absurd if we are still tempted to assimilate sapience to sentience, thus to think of sensations as the objects of ‘immediate’ knowledge.
sapiently
- This is the reiterated message from the gods of which the daily press delivers itself so sapiently, and by which it maintains its popularity and power.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin sapient- 'being wise', from the verb sapere.