Discernment \Dis*cern"ment\, n. [Cf. F. discernement.]
1. The act of discerning.
[1913 Webster]
2. The power or faculty of the mind by which it distinguishes
one thing from another; power of viewing differences in
objects, and their relations and tendencies; penetrative
and discriminate mental vision; acuteness; sagacity;
insight; as, the errors of youth often proceed from the
want of discernment.
Syn: Judgment; acuteness; discrimination; penetration;
sagacity; insight. -- Discernment, Penetration,
Discrimination. Discernment is keenness and accuracy
of mental vision; penetration is the power of seeing
deeply into a subject in spite of everything that
intercepts the view; discrimination is a capacity of
tracing out minute distinctions and the nicest shades of
thought. A discerning man is not easily misled; one of a
penetrating mind sees a multitude of things which escape
others; a discriminating judgment detects the slightest
differences.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
discernment
n 1: the cognitive condition of someone who understands; "he has
virtually no understanding of social cause and effect"
[syn: understanding, apprehension, savvy]
2: delicate discrimination (especially of aesthetic values);
"arrogance and lack of taste contributed to his rapid
success"; "to ask at that particular time was the ultimate
in bad taste" [syn: taste, appreciation, perceptiveness]
3: perception of that which is obscure [syn: perceptiveness]
4: ability to make good judgments [syn: sagacity, sagaciousness,
judgment, judgement]
5: the trait of judging wisely and objectively; "a man of
discernment" [syn: discretion]
WordNet (r) 2.0
72 Moby Thesaurus words for "discernment":
acuity, acumen, acuteness, apperception, astuteness, clear sight,
cogency, color vision, cone vision, critical discernment,
day vision, daylight vision, discrimination, eye, eye-mindedness,
eyesight, farseeingness, farsight, farsightedness, field of view,
field of vision, flair, foresight, foresightedness, horizon,
incisiveness, insight, intuition, judgment, keen sight, keenness,
ken, longheadedness, longsightedness, night vision, penetration,
perception, perceptiveness, percipience, peripheral field,
peripheral vision, perspicaciousness, perspicacity, perspicuity,
perspicuousness, photopia, power of sight, providence, purview,
quick sight, range, reason, rod vision, sagaciousness, sagacity,
scope, scotopia, seeing, sense of sight, sensibility, shrewdness,
sight, sightedness, sweep, trenchancy, twilight vision,
unobstructed vision, vision, visual acuity, visual field,
visual sense, wit
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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