Instinct

How to spell instinct

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce instinct

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does instinct mean?

1. nounAn innate, untaught impulse or natural tendency that drives behaviour without conscious reasoning.

Instinct in a sentence

• Her first instinct was to call the bank and freeze the card.

• A good nurse relies on training as much as on raw instinct.

Where does instinct come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word arrived in English in the fifteenth century from the Latin instinctus, meaning 'impulse' or 'instigation', a noun formed from the verb instinguere, 'to incite' or 'to impel'. That verb combined the prefix in-, meaning 'toward', with stinguere, which carried the sense of 'to prick' or 'to goad', the same root that lies behind 'distinguish' and 'extinguish'. The underlying image is a creature being pricked into action from within, urged on by something it does not consciously choose. From the idea of an inner prompting it came to mean the innate, untaught behaviour an animal or person is driven to by nature. The hidden 'st' cluster and the final '-nct' are the spelling trap: it ends like 'distinct' and 'extinct', its close relatives, rather than with a tempting '-ed' or '-ked'.

How the word is built

• in- (toward, into)
• stinct (from Latin stinguere: to prick, goad)