nous

alternative noos · alternative nouse

1. uncountablehuman sciencesThe mind or intellect, faculty for rationality or reason using the necessary common sense or awareness.

   I feel the will to roam, to learn By test, experience, nous, That fire is hot and ocean deep, And wolves carnivorous.

   1900, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes

2. uncountableThe divine reason, regarded as first divine emanation.
3. uncountableCommon sense; practical intelligence.

   to demonstrate nous

   2 more examples

   There is nothing original in absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the lower classes have no nous.

   1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part I (Cambridge), page 13

   The emerging African elite felt little affection for the wahindi, seen as tight-fisted, snooty and brazenly colour-conscious, but its members knew they needed its business nous.

   2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower