pensée

See also: pensee

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French pensée. Doublet of pansy.

Noun

pensée (plural pensées)

1. A thought.
   • 1980 December 13, Michael Bronski, “A Longing For Passion To Transcend Thought”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 21, page 12:

     Words come after words with little punctuation, and because the lines are short our eyes fall down the page, scanning, shifting, making sense of each as it follows or comes upon the next. Yet, rather than a rush of feelings, the lines are pensees: a flow that incites intellectually, not viscerally.

Related terms

• arrière-pensée

 

Anagrams

• epeens

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɑ̃.se/

• Audio:

  (file)

Participle

pensée f sg

1. feminine singular of pensé

Noun

pensée f (plural pensées)

1. a thought (first attested 1176 in Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, ed. A. Micha, 5246)
2. reflection, meditation, faculty of thinking (late 12th century)
   • late 12th century, Orson de Beauvais:

     Bone pansée (“wise reflection”).

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1216, Guillaume Le Clerc, edited by W. Frescoln, Fergus, published 3093:

     Rentrer en sa pensée.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1278, Sarrazin, edited by A. Henry, Roman du Hem, published 4502:

     Entrer en une pensée.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

3. (in the expression “être en pensée”) worry, concern (late 12th century)
   • late 12th century, Eneas, ms. A (second edition):

     Estre en pensé por.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • first half of the 13th century, La fille du Comte de Ponthieu, ed. C. Brunel, 288-289 and 379:

     Estre en molt grief pensée; estre en mout grant pensée de (aucun).

   • 18 September 1789, letter of Archduchess Elisabeth to the later emperor Joseph II, published in Archiv für österreichische Geschichte, vol. 44 (1871), p. 204:

     Je ne puis dormir, toujours je suis en pensée avec la moitié de moi-même et les dangers auxquels vous êtes exposé se représentent si vivement à mon imagination qu’ils m’ôtent tout sommeil.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

4. the mind as the seat of thinking (c. 1200)
5. (obsolete) amorous attachment (c. 1200)
6. manner of thinking (c. 1215)
7. an idea coming up in one's mind (c. 1220 in Anseïs de Carthage, 332)
8. the guiding idea of a decision made or one's will (c. 1274 in Adenet Le Roi, Berte, 1644)
9. moral disposition (first quarter of 13th century)
10. an operation of the mind (since 1636)
11. idea expressed by an author in a literary or artistic work (since 1621)
    • 1621, Étienne Binet, Essai des merveilles de Nature, chap. X, p. 201:

      Jetter ses premières pensées sur la toile.

      (please add an English translation of this quotation)

    • 1669, Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion:
    • 1801, Académie française and Samuel Heinrich Catel, Dictionnaire de l'Académie Françoise, vol. 4, de Lagarde, Paris, p. 324:

      Travestir une pensée (“disguise an idea, represent it under a different form”).

      (please add an English translation of this quotation)

12. thinking, worldview of an author

    Travestir la pensée d'un auteur.

13. a pansy (plant) (c. 1460)

Derived terms

• arrière-pensée
• école de pensée
• expérience de pensée
• lire dans les pensées

 

Descendants

• English: pansy
  • Japanese: パンジー (panjī)
• Greek: πανσές (pansés)
• Vietnamese: păng-xê

Further reading

• “pensée”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle French

Alternative forms

• pensee

Noun

pensée f (plural pensées)

1. thought

Norman

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

pensée f (plural pensées)

1. (Jersey) pansy

Synonyms

• faches dé cat