different between sapience vs knowledge

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French sapience, from Latin sapientia.

Noun

sapience (usually uncountable, plural sapiences)

1. The property of being sapient, the property of possessing or being able to possess wisdom.
   • 1478, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" 1195-8, [1]

     Povert is hateful good, and, as I gesse, / A ful greet bringer out of bisinesse; / A greet amender eek of sapience / To him that taketh it in pacience.

   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I, Chapter V, [2]

     As much Experience, is Prudence; so, is much Science, Sapience.

   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VII, 192-6, [3]

     Mean while the Son / On his great Expedition now appeer'd, / Girt with Omnipotence, with Radiance crown'd / Of Majestie Divine, Sapience and Love / Immense, and all his Father in him shon.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 8, [4]

     Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience, primitive in its kind, saw or thought it saw something which, in contrast with the war-ship's environment, looked oddly incongruous in the Handsome Sailor?

   • 1926, Dorothy Parker, "Ballade at Thirty-Five" in The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker, New York: The Modern Library, 1936, p. 60,

     This, a solo of sapience, / This, a chantey of sophistry, / This, the sum of experiments— / I loved them until they loved me.

   • 2009, Robert Brandom, Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas

     I then marked out three ways in which we can instead describe and demarcate ourselves in terms of the sapience that distinguishes us from the beasts of forest and field.

French

Etymology

From Middle French sapience, from Old French sapience, borrowed from Latin sapientia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sa.pj??s/

Noun

sapience f (plural sapiences)

1. wisdom, sapience

Related terms

• savoir

Further reading

• “sapience” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French sapience.

Noun

sapience f (plural sapiences)

1. wisdom, sapience

Descendants

• French: sapience

Old French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin sapientia.

Noun

sapience f (oblique plural sapiences, nominative singular sapience, nominative plural sapiences)

1. wisdom, sapience

Descendants

• ? English: sapience
• Middle French: sapience
  • French: sapience

English

Alternative forms

• (obsolete) knolege, knowlage, knowleche, knowledg, knowlege, knowliche, knowlych, knowlech
• (obsolete, uncommon, Scottish) knaulege, knaulage, knawlage
• (obsolete, uncommon) knoleche, knoleige, knowlache, knolych
• (obsolete, verb) knawlache

Etymology

From Middle English knowleche, knaweleche, cnawlece (“knowledge”), from knowen (“to know, recognise”) + -leche. Related to Middle English knowlechen (“to find out, acknowledge”). For more on the Middle English suffix -leche, compare freelage. Compare also Old English cn?wel??, cn?wel??ing (“acknowledging, acknowledgement”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?n?l?d?/
• (General American) enPR: n?l?ij, IPA^(key): /?n?l?d?/
• (obsolete) enPR: n?l?ij, IPA^(key): /?no?l?d?/
• Rhymes: -?l?d?
• Hyphenation UK: know?ledge, US: knowl?edge

Noun

knowledge (usually uncountable, plural knowledges)

1. The fact of knowing about something; general understanding or familiarity with a subject, place, situation etc. [from 14th c.]
2. Awareness of a particular fact or situation; a state of having been informed or made aware of something. [from 14th c.]
   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice:

     He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it.

3. Intellectual understanding; the state of appreciating truth or information. [from 14th c.]
4. Familiarity or understanding of a particular skill, branch of learning etc. [from 14th c.]

5. (philosophical) Justified true belief
6. (archaic or law) Sexual intimacy or intercourse (now usually in phrase carnal knowledge). [from 15th c.]
   • 1573, George Gascoigne, "The Adventures of Master F.J.", An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction:

     Every time that he had knowledge of her he would leave, either in the bed, or in her cushion-cloth, or by her looking-glass, or in some place where she must needs find it, a piece of money […].

7. (obsolete) Information or intelligence about something; notice. [15th-18th c.]
   • 1580, Edward Hayes, "Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland", Voyages and Travels Ancient and Modern, ed. Charles W Eliot, Cosimo 2005, p. 280:

     Item, if any ship be in danger […], every man to bear towards her, answering her with one light for a short time, and so to put it out again; thereby to give knowledge that they have seen her token.

8. The total of what is known; all information and products of learning. [from 16th c.]

9. (countable) Something that can be known; a branch of learning; a piece of information; a science. [from 16th c.]
   • There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges.

10. (obsolete) Acknowledgement. [14th-16th c.]
11. (obsolete) Notice, awareness. [17th c.]
    • 1611, The Bible, Authorized Version, Ruth II.10:

      Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?

12. (Britain, informal) The deep familiarity with certain routes and places of interest required by taxicab drivers working in London, England.
    • 2002, Malcolm Bobbitt, Taxi! - The Story of the London Cab

      There is only one sure way to memorise the runs and that is to follow them, either on foot, cycle or motor cycle; hence, the familiar sight of would-be cabbies learning the knowledge during evenings and weekends.

Quotations

• 1996, Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A feminist international politics, pages ix-x:

  There are by now many feminisms (Tong, 1989; Humm, 1992). […] They are in shifting alliance or contest with postmodern critiques, which at times seem to threaten the very category 'women' and its possibilities for a feminist politics. These debates inform this attempt at worlding women—moving beyond white western power centres and their dominant knowledges […].

Usage notes

• Adjectives often used with “knowledge”: extensive, deep, superficial, theoretical, practical, useful, working, encyclopedic, public, private, scientific, tacit, explicit, general, specialized, special, broad, declarative, procedural, innate, etc.

Synonyms

• awareness
• cognizance
• ken
• knowingness
• learning

Antonyms

• ignorance

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• know
• knowing

Translations

Verb

knowledge (third-person singular simple present knowledges, present participle knowledging, simple past and past participle knowledged)

1. (obsolete) To confess as true; to acknowledge. [13th-17th c.]
   • 1526, Bible, tr. William Tyndale, Matthew 3:

     Then went oute to hym Jerusalem, and all Jury, and all the region rounde aboute Jordan, and were baptised of hym in Jordan, knoledging their synnes.

See also

• data
• erudition
• information
• know-how
• perception
• wisdom

Further reading

• knowledge in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• knowledge in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.