sixth sense

plural sixth senses

1. Extrasensory perception; the ability to sense things by means other than the known bodily senses.

   Among themselves they communicate by means of what Perry says must be a sixth sense which is cognizant of a fourth dimension.

   1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter V, in At the Earth's Core

   3 more examples

   Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand, Dominic detected something suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with.

   1919, Joseph Conrad, chapter III, in The Arrow of Gold: A Story between Two Notes, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, […], →OCLC

   What Ghaznavi had considered animal intuition or some sixth sense was merely the razor-edged faculties and savage wit of the barbarian.

   1934 August, Robert E. Howard, The Devil in Iron, Chapter IV, published in Weird Tales

   What can he know of catalepsy, and thought-transference and the sixth sense of fish, of birds, of negroes; the deadly meaning of a white chicken's feather, a crossed stick in the road, a little leather bag of bones and herbs?

   1954, Ian Fleming, “Allumeuse”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 108

   Synonyms: second sight