Experience

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Experience \Ex*pe"ri*ence\ ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*ens), n. [F.
     exp['e]rience, L. experientia, tr. experiens, experientis, p.
     pr. of experiri, expertus, to try; ex out + the root of
     peritus experienced. See {Peril}, and cf. {Expert}.]
     1. Trial, as a test or experiment. [Obs.]
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              She caused him to make experience
              Upon wild beasts.                     --Spenser.
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     2. The effect upon the judgment or feelings produced by any
        event, whether witnessed or participated in; personal and
        direct impressions as contrasted with description or
        fancies; personal acquaintance; actual enjoyment or
        suffering. "Guided by other's experiences." --Shak.
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              I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and
              that is the lamp of experience.       --P. Henry
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              To most men experience is like the stern lights of a
              ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.
                                                    --Coleridge.
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              When the consuls . . . came in . . . they knew soon
              by experience how slenderly guarded against danger
              the majesty of rulers is where force is wanting.
                                                    --Holland.
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              Those that undertook the religion of our Savior upon
              his preaching, had no experience of it. --Sharp.
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     3. An act of knowledge, one or more, by which single facts or
        general truths are ascertained; experimental or inductive
        knowledge; hence, implying skill, facility, or practical
        wisdom gained by personal knowledge, feeling or action;
        as, a king without experience of war.
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              Whence hath the mind all the materials of reason and
              knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from
              experience.                           --Locke.
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              Experience may be acquired in two ways; either,
              first by noticing facts without any attempt to
              influence the frequency of their occurrence or to
              vary the circumstances under which they occur; this
              is observation; or, secondly, by putting in action
              causes or agents over which we have control, and
              purposely varying their combinations, and noticing
              what effects take place; this is experiment. --Sir
                                                    J. Herschel.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Experience \Ex*pe"ri*ence\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Experienced}
     ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*enst); p. pr. & vb. n. {Experiencing}
     ([e^]ks*p[=e]"r[i^]*en*s[i^]ng).]
     1. To make practical acquaintance with; to try personally; to
        prove by use or trial; to have trial of; to have the lot
        or fortune of; to have befall one; to be affected by; to
        feel; as, to experience pain or pleasure; to experience
        poverty; to experience a change of views.
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              The partial failure and disappointment which he had
              experienced in India.                 --Thirwall.
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     2. To exercise; to train by practice.
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              The youthful sailors thus with early care
              Their arms experience, and for sea prepare. --Harte.
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     {To experience religion} (Theol.), to become a convert to the
        doctrines of Christianity; to yield to the power of
        religious truth.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  experience
       n 1: the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from
            direct participation in events or activities; "a man of
            experience"; "experience is the best teacher" [ant: {inexperience}]
       2: the content of direct observation or participation in an
          event; "he had a religious experience"; "he recalled the
          experience vividly"
       3: an event as apprehended; "a surprising experience"; "that
          painful experience certainly got our attention"
       v 1: go or live through; "We had many trials to go through"; "he
            saw action in Viet Nam" [syn: {undergo}, {see}, {go
            through}]
       2: have firsthand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or
          sensations; "I know the feeling!"; "have you ever known
          hunger?"; "I have lived a kind of hell when I was a drug
          addict"; "The holocaust survivors have lived a nightmare";
          "I lived through two divorces" [syn: {know}, {live}]
       3: of mental or physical states or experiences; "get an idea";
          "experience vertigo"; "get nauseous"; "undergo a strange
          sensation"; "The chemical undergoes a sudden change"; "The
          fluid undergoes shear"; "receive injuries"; "have a
          feeling" [syn: {receive}, {have}, {get}, {undergo}]
       4: undergo an emotional sensation; "She felt resentful"; "He
          felt regret" [syn: {feel}]
       5: undergo; "The stocks had a fast run-up" [syn: {have}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  136 Moby Thesaurus words for "experience":
     accept, acquaintance, adventure, affair, affect, affection,
     apprehend, awareness, background, be aware of, be conscious of,
     be exposed to, be sensible of, be subjected to, behold, blaseness,
     circumstance, common sense, consciousness, contact, corpus, data,
     datum, emotion, emotional charge, emotional shade, encounter,
     endure, episode, event, expertise, exposure, face, fact, facts,
     factual base, familiarity, feel, feel deeply, feeling,
     feeling tone, foreboding, go through, gut reaction, hap, happening,
     happenstance, have, have a sensation, hear, heartthrob, impression,
     incident, information, intelligence, intimacy, involvement,
     inwardness, judgement, ken, know, know-how, knowing, knowledge,
     labor under, live through, matter of fact, meet, meet up with,
     meet with, observation, occasion, occurrence, ordeal,
     participation, particular, pass through, passion, past experience,
     pay, perceive, percept, perception, phenomenon,
     practical knowledge, practice, presentiment, private knowledge,
     privity, profound sense, ratio cognoscendi, reaction, reality,
     receive, receive an impression, respond, respond to stimuli,
     response, response to stimuli, run up against, sagacity, sample,
     savoir faire, savor, savvy, seasoning, see, self-knowledge,
     sensation, sense, sense impression, sense perception,
     sensory experience, sentiment, skill, smell, sophistication, spend,
     stand under, suffer, survey, sustain, taste, technic, technics,
     technique, tempering, test, touch, trial, turn of events,
     undercurrent, undergo, view, wisdom, worldly wisdom
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  EXPERIENCE, n.  The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an
  undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
  
      To one who, journeying through night and fog,
      Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
      Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
      Reveals the path that he should not have gone.
                                                          Joel Frad Bink