Meaning & use
conscience
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Meanings
nouncountable
The inner voice or feeling that tells you whether something you have done or plan to do is right or wrong.
Grammar: Usually singular with a possessive or the: a guilty conscience, his conscience.
Patterns
- on your conscience
- have a clear conscience
- a conscience about something
His conscience bothered him after he lied to his friend.
She returned the wallet because her conscience would not let her keep it.
A good lawyer must have a conscience as well as skill.
noununcountable
A feeling of guilt or unease about something you did wrong.
Grammar: Used in fixed phrases: guilty conscience, a pang of conscience, with a clear conscience.
Patterns
- a guilty conscience
- a pang of conscience
- have something on your conscience
He confessed because he could no longer live with the weight on his conscience.
She slept soundly, with a clear conscience.
The cheating still sits heavily on my conscience.
Word forms
| plural | consciences |
|---|
Common combinations
- guilty conscience
- A guilty conscience kept him awake all night.
- clear conscience
- I can say with a clear conscience that I did my best.
- pang of conscience
- She felt a pang of conscience as she walked past the beggar.
- prick of conscience
- A prick of conscience made him go back and apologize.
- in good conscience
- I cannot in good conscience approve the plan.
- crisis of conscience
- The scandal caused a crisis of conscience among the staff.
Synonyms and how they differ
- moral sense
- Moral sense is a neutral, abstract phrase for the ability to judge right and wrong, while conscience is personal and feels like an inner voice.
- scruples
- Scruples are specific doubts that stop you doing something, and a conscience is the wider faculty that produces them.
- remorse
- Remorse is deep regret about a wrong you have already done, whereas conscience can warn you before and judge afterward.
- principles
- Principles are the beliefs you live by, while conscience is the inner feeling that tells you when you break them.
Opposites
Word family
- conscientious adjective
- careful and guided by a sense of duty
- conscientiously adverb
- in a careful, dutiful way
- unconscionable adjective
- shockingly unfair or wrong
- conscience-stricken adjective
- feeling deeply guilty
Commonly confused: conscience or conscious? conscience or consciousness?
conscience vs conscious
Conscious means awake or aware, as in conscious of the noise, while conscience is the inner sense of right and wrong.
conscience vs consciousness
Consciousness is the state of being awake and aware, and is not about morality.
Practice
He had taken the money, and his ______ would not let him enjoy it.
Choose one answer.
Conscience is the inner moral sense that produces guilt. Conscious is an adjective and consciousness means awareness, which are the tempting wrong choices.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “conscience”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.