means any of the faculties (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) by which the body perceives the world, or more broadly the capacity to perceive, understand, or judge something.

from From Latin 'sensus,' meaning a faculty of perceiving or feeling, from the verb 'sentire,' to feel or perceive. It arrived in English through Old French 'sens' around the 14th century, and 'sentire' is the same root that quietly feeds 'sentiment,' 'sentinel,' 'consent,' and 'resent' — a whole family of words built on the act of feeling something.