sixth sense

Adding to the traditional five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing.

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sixth sense (plural sixth senses)

1. Extrasensory perception; the ability to sense things by means other than the known bodily senses.

   Synonym: second sight

   • 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter V, in At the Earth's Core:

     Among themselves they communicate by means of what Perry says must be a sixth sense which is cognizant of a fourth dimension.

   • 1919, Joseph Conrad, chapter 3, in The Arrow of Gold: A Story between Two Notes, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, […], →OCLC:

     Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand, Dominic detected something suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with.

   • 1934 August, Robert E. Howard, The Devil in Iron, Chapter IV, published in Weird Tales:

     What Ghaznavi had considered animal intuition or some sixth sense was merely the razor-edged faculties and savage wit of the barbarian.

• five senses