To perceive, to understand, to appreciate.
1849. ‘Do you sense what you are doing, Jack?’ said she. ‘Sense it, Susy?’ replied Blackstone; ‘I do, to the letter.’—Knick. Mag., xxxiii. 201 (March).
1853. If he lands upon the shores of a foreign country, the moment his feet press their soil, their spirit presses his heart! he senses it.—Orson Hyde at the Mormon Tabernacle, Oct. 6: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 125.
1856. You must know what sort o’ a man Deacon Whipple was, or else you won’t sense the joke.—Whitcher, ‘The Widow Bedott Papers,’ No. 28.
1857. When any beast in the woods gets the start o’ me and this here snorter [the speaker’s dog], (nodding to the slut,) he ’s smart, now—do you sense that?—Knick. Mag., xlix. 68 (Jan.).
1857. We all sense this in a degree, because it has always been taught to us.—Brigham Young, Nov. 29: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ vi. 95.
1891. I jest had to set and knit daytimes, and sense the lonesomeness.—Rose T. Cooke, ‘Huckleberries,’ p. 331 (Boston).
1899. Of late years she had not seemed to “sense” the inferiority, so to speak, and once in reference to the war she had declared that she was glad to be a girl, and thus debarred from fighting, “fur killing folks, no matter fur whut or how, always seemed to be sinful!”—Mary N. Murfree, ‘The Bushwhackers,’ pp. 28–9.
1908. People are sensing the demand for experts in this important field of religious education, and they modestly shun the “little parishes of eight,” as Professor Merriam suggestively styles them.—G. W. Fiske, ‘The Expert Minister, and His Training of His Laymen,’ Bibliotheca Sacra, Oberlin, Ohio, lxv. 472 (July).
1909. Can it be that the Governor sensed the desires of the bulk of the citizens?—N.Y. Evening Post, Aug. 2.
