knowledge

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Cognizance

Nouns

1. knowledge, cognizance, cognition, acquaintance, ken, privity, familiarity, comprehension, apprehension, recognition, appreciation; intuition, conscience, consciousness, awareness, perception, precognition; light, enlightenment; facts of life; experience, the university of life, tree of life; glimpse, insight, inkling, glimmer, suspicion, impression.

2. science, philosophy, theory, doctrine, epistemology; encyclopedia; erudition, learning, lore, scholarship, reading, letters, literature, book learning, information, store of knowledge, education, culture; attainments, accomplishments, proficiency, skill, wisdom, omniscience. Informal, know-how.

3. sage, wise man, luminary, magus, savant, philosopher, Nestor, Solon, pundit; highbrow; graduate, academician, academist; master, doctor; fellow, don; mathematician, scientist, littérateur, intellectual, intelligentsia; learned or literary man; man of learning, letters, or education; bookworm, scholar (see learning); literati, cognoscenti. Informal, wise guy, weisenheimer.

Verbs

1. know, ken, wot (archaic), be aware of; ween, trow; possess; apprehend, conceive, comprehend, realize, understand, appreciate, fathom, make out; recognize, discern, perceive, see, experience; feel or know in one's bones. See intelligence.

2. know full well, know like the back of one's hand; have in one's head, have at one's fingertips, know by heart, be master of, know what's what, know one's way around, have been around, have one's eyes open. Slang, know the score, know one's stuff, know shit from shinola, know one's assfrom a hole in the ground.

3. see one's way, discover, learn, study, ascertain, see the elephant.

Adjectives

1. knowing, cognitive, conscious, cognizant, aware, perceptive.

2. aware of, cognizant of, conscious of, apprised of, told, acquainted with, privy to, no stranger to, up to, alive to; proficient in, versed in, at home with; conversant or familiar with; not born yesterday, nobody's fool; sophisticated, cosmopolitan. Slang, hip, hep, wise, wised up, with it, in the know, fly.

3. knowledgeable, erudite, scholarly, instructed, learned, lettered, literary, educated, well-informed, well-read, well-grounded, well-educated, enlightened, shrewd; bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, accomplished, omniscient; sage, wise, intellectual; emeritus. Slang, bright collar.

4. known, ascertained, well-known, recognized, proverbial, familiar, hackneyed, trite, commonplace.

5. knowable, cognizable, ascertainable, perceptible, discernible, comprehensible.

Phrases — experience is the best teacher; live and learn; once bitten, twice shy; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; know thyself.

Quotations — The years teach much which the days never know (Emerson), All experience is an arch to build upon (Henry Adams), I've looked at life from both sides now... I really don't know life at all (Joni Mitchell), An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself (Albert Camus), I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance (Socrates), Knowledge itself is power (Francis Bacon), There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it (Cicero), There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science (Louis Pasteur), It is much easier to make measurements than to know exactly what you are measuring (J. W. N. Sullivan), All science is either physics or stamp collecting (Ernest Rutherford), The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error (Bertolt Brecht), Modern science was largely conceived as an answer to the servant problem (Fran Lebowitz).

Antonyms, see ignorance, folly.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [That which is known]

Syn. information, learning, lore, erudition, wisdom, scholarship, facts, data, instruction, book-learning, cognizance, understanding, comprehension, enlightenment, expertise, intelligence, light, doctrine, dogma, theory, science, principles, data base, philosophy, awareness, insight, proficiency, attainments, accomplishments, education, culture, substance, observation, experience, store of learning, know-how*, the scoop*, the goods*, the know*; see also culture 3 , data , experience 3 .

Ant. emptiness, ignorance*, pretension.

2. [Awareness]

Syn. acquaintance, familiarity, conversance, consciousness; see awareness , familiarity 2 .

Syn.- knowledge applies to any body of facts gathered by study, observation, etc., and to the ideas inferred from these facts, and connotes an understanding of what is known [ man's knowledge of the universe ] ; information applies to data that are gathered in any way, as by reading, observation, hearsay, etc. and does not necessarily connote validity [ inaccurate information] ; learning is knowledge acquired by study, especially in languages, literature, philosophy, etc.; erudition implies profound or abstruse learning beyond the comprehension of most people; wisdom implies superior judgment and understanding based on broad knowledge and experience

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

1. acquaintance familiarity, awareness, understanding, apprehension, conversance, appreciation, consciousness, cognizance, realization, perception, enlightenment, experience, recognition, memory. ''The wing wherewith we fly to heaven.''— Shakespeare. ''An unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.''—Jacob Bronowski. ''The only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.''—J.M. Clark.

2. education schooling, erudition, learning, scholarship, instruction, enlightenment.

3. information facts, data, *low-down, lore, science, wisdom.

ANT.: ignorance, unfamiliarity, unconsciousness

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. That which is known; the sum of what has been perceived, discovered, or inferred: information, lore, wisdom. See KNOWLEDGE. 2. Known facts, ideas, and skill that have been imparted: education, erudition, instruction, learning, scholarship, science. See KNOWLEDGE. 3. That which is known about a specific subject or situation: data, fact (used in plural), information, intelligence, lore. See KNOWLEDGE.