Sensed

How to spell sensed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sensed

What does sensed mean?

1. verbDetected or became aware of something through feeling or instinct rather than direct evidence.

Sensed in a sentence

• She sensed trouble the moment she walked into the meeting.

• The dog sensed the approaching storm long before the rain began.

Where does sensed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of the verb 'sense', which traces back to the Latin verb sentire, meaning 'to feel, to perceive, or to be aware of'. From that verb came the noun sensus, literally 'a feeling' or 'a faculty of perceiving', and English took the word in through Old French during the late Middle Ages. The verb 'to sense', meaning to detect or feel something without direct proof, grew naturally out of the noun and was well established by the seventeenth century. The same sentire root sits inside a whole family of familiar words such as 'sentiment', 'sentinel', 'consent', and 'sentence', all of which once carried the idea of feeling or perceiving. The spelling trap in 'sensed' is purely the ending: the base word ends in a soft -se sound, so writers must remember it is spelled with an 's' (not a 'c') before the regular '-ed', giving sens-ed rather than the tempting but wrong 'senced'.

How the word is built

• sens- (from Latin sentire: to feel, perceive)
• -ed (past tense suffix)