insight

When you have an insight, you have a feeling or emotion or thought that helps you to know something essential about a person or thing.

Insight isn't based on hard facts or evidence. And it doesn't have anything to do with using your senses such as sight or smell. When you gain insight, you are using your intuition, or sixth sense. Insight is formed from the prefix in- plus the English word sight, so this word literally means seeing inward.

Definitions of insight
  1. noun
    clear or deep perception of a situation
    synonyms: penetration
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    type of:
    perception
    knowledge gained by perceiving
  2. noun
    the clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation
    synonyms: brainstorm, brainwave
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    types:
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    light
    mental understanding as an enlightening experience
    revelation
    an enlightening or astonishing disclosure
    breakthrough, discovery, find
    a productive insight
    flash
    a sudden brilliant understanding
    type of:
    apprehension, discernment, savvy, understanding
    the cognitive condition of someone who understands
  3. noun
    a feeling of understanding
    synonyms: perceptiveness, perceptivity
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    type of:
    sensibility
    refined sensitivity to pleasurable or painful impressions
  4. noun
    grasping the inner nature of things intuitively
    synonyms: sixth sense
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    type of:
    intuition
    instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes)
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