Perceiving

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /pɚˈsivɪŋ/

Definitions

1. The process of becoming aware of sensory stimuli and interpreting their meaning involves recognizing and understanding various aspects of the environment
2. The act of noticing or recognizing something through sensory input
3. Gaining awareness of objects, events, or stimuli by using sight, sound, touch, or other senses

Etymology: "Perceiving" is the present participle and gerund of "perceive", so its story is really the story of its parent verb. That verb came into Middle English as "perceyven", borrowed from Old French "percevoir" or "perceveir", which in turn descends from Latin "percipere". The Latin verb was built from "per", meaning "by" or "through", and "capere", meaning "to take", so its literal sense was something like "to take hold of thoroughly." The Latin root is the same one behind "capable", which shows how far the idea has travelled. A thing that could be taken hold of became a mind that could take hold of impressions, and "perceive" grew from physically grasping things into registering them through the senses or the intellect. The same "-ceive" family includes "conceive", "deceive" and "receive", all built on the same "capere" stem with different prefixes.

Synonyms: seeing, noticing, recognizing, observing, detecting

Antonyms: ignoring, overlooking, miss, disregarding