cognition

What it means

1. countableuncountableThe process of knowing, of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought and through the senses.

   human cognition

   5 more examples

   social cognition

   cognition research

   Children develop cognition rapidly in their early years.

   The study focused on animal cognition.

   That all our Cognition begins with Experience, there is not any doubt; for how otherwise should the faculty of cognition be awakened into exercise, if this did not occur through objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, and partly bring our Understanding-capacity into action, to compare these, to connect, or to separate them, and in this way to work up the rude matter of sensible impressions into a cognition of objects, which is termed experience?

   1838, Immanuel Kant, “Introduction. I. Of the Difference between Pure and Empirical Cognition.”, in [Francis Haywood], transl., Critick of Pure Reason […], London: William Pickering, →OCLC, page 3

2. countableA result of a cognitive process.
3. archaiccountableuncountableKnowledge; awareness.

In a sentence

human cognition

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*ḱe?
2. Proto-Indo-European*ḱóm
3. Proto-Italic*kom
4. Proto-Italic*kom-
5. Latincon-
6. Proto-Indo-European*ǵneh₃-
7. Proto-Indo-European*ǵn̥h₃sḱéti
8. Proto-Italic*gnōskō
9. Latingnōscō
10. Latincognōscō
11. Latincognitiō
12. Middle Englishcognicioun
13. Englishcognition

From Middle English cognicion, cognicioun from Latin cognitiō (“knowledge, perception, a judicial examination, trial”), from cognitus, past participle of cognoscere (“to know”), from co- (“together”) + *gnoscere, older form of noscere (“to know”); see know, and compare cognize, cognizance, cognizor, cognosce, connoisseur.