perception.

1. The process or experience of noticing and interpreting information received through the senses.

2. A way of understanding or judging someone or something, shaped by experience and how things appear.

3. The ability to notice and understand details, meanings, or motives that are not immediately obvious.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• sensory perception
• visual perception
• depth perception
• auditory perception
• altered perception

On the page

The slanted walls distorted her perception of the room’s size.

The experiment tested whether background noise changed participants’ perception of speech.

In the darkness, his perception of distance became unreliable.

The investigation changed public perception of the company’s safety record.

Her perception of the disagreement differed sharply from her brother’s.

Usage notes

Noun: perception; plural perceptions. Usually uncountable for sensory processing or the ability to understand, but countable for a particular impression, interpretation, or sensory experience. Patterns: perception of something; the perception that + clause; change someone’s perception. Perceive is a related verb, not an inflection of this noun. No verbal forms belong in this entry. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).