1 [C,U] the part of your mind that tells you whether your actions are right or wrong:
to have a clear / guilty conscience (= to feel that you have done right / wrong) * This is a matter of individual conscience (= everyone must make their own judgement about it). * He won't let it trouble his conscience.
seealsoSOCIALCONSCIENCE
2 [U,C] a feeling of guilt about sth you have done or failed to do:
She was seized by a sudden pang of conscience. * I have a terrible conscience about it.
3 [U] the fact of behaving in a way that you feel is right even though this may cause problems:
freedom of conscience (= the freedom to do what you believe to be right) * Emilia is the voice of conscience in the play.
seealsoPRISONEROFCONSCIENCE
IDIOMS
in (all / good) conscience (formal) believing your actions to be fair
SYNHONESTLY:
We cannot in all conscience refuse to help.
on your conscience making you feel guilty for doing or failing to do sth:
I'll write and apologize. I've had it on my conscience for weeks. * It's still on my conscience that I didn't warn him in time.
moreatPRICKv.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of conscience come from?
This entry for conscience is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is conscience a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, conscience is tagged as noun.
Does conscience appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — conscience appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
