Is the correct spelling sence or sense?
The only correct spelling is sense in today’s English.
Let us take a look at the main definitions of sense.
- (noun) a means by which the body perceives external stimuli that stimulate sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch
Example: A dog’s sense of smell is thousands of times stronger than a human’s.
- (noun) a feeling that something is the case
Example: I had a sense that no one in the room was telling the truth.
- (noun) a sane, realistic, reasonable, or comprehensible attitude or rationale
Example: It made sense that the first person in the office should turn on the lights.
- (verb) perceived by sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, or a feeling
Example: Animals can sense when a natural disaster is coming.
- (verb) detect
Example: The metal detector senses a piece of metal in this box.
The statistics
With the Google Books Ngram Viewer, we can see that the misspelling sence is not used in published books within the Google Books database while the properly spelled sense is used extensively.
Example sentences
- Humans’ sense of touch is thanks to the nerve cells in our bodies that send signals to our brain.
- Wally had a sense that something was off with Charlie today.
- The concept was finally starting to make sense after our physics teacher guided us through the experiment.
- Kathy felt a sense of responsibility for the lost child even though she had just met him.
- Peter had a fine sense of what made upper management laugh.
- I admired Roy’s social skills and great sense.
- Luke thought the new OKR system made no sense and that the company should revert back to the old one.
- Deangelo was told that he has no common sense by several people throughout his lifetime.
- Joshua claims he can sense ghosts in the warehouse, but I don’t believe him.
- A bat has a great sense of hearing and uses its echo to navigate caves.
Homophones
Sense is not to be confused with its homophones, which includes words like cents, scents, and cense (archaic). Although the words have similar pronunciation, they all have different meanings.
- cents: the plural form of cent, which is a monetary unit
- scents: the plural form of scent, which is a distinctive smell
- cense (archaic): to add a scent ritually with burning incense
Other commonly misspelled words
Because C can be pronounced as both the S and K sound, people tend to misspell words that contain both Cs and Ss. Below are some examples.
- absence (correct), absense (misspelling)
- nonsense (correct), nonsence (misspelling)
- license (US, verb in UK), licence (noun in UK), lisense (misspelling)
- incense (correct), insence (misspelling), insense (misspelling)
- sauce (correct), sause (misspelling)
Common phrases containing sense
The word sense is used in many common idioms and phrases such as “common sense” and “sense of responsibility.” The following are some more common expressions that use sense.
- Todd had great fashion sense, and he loved to wear borderline avant-garde outfits to work.
- Jo is loved by everyone she meets because of her great sense of humor.
- A kind of sixth sense told Hank that he should look over his shoulder in this mysterious neighborhood.
- The interrogator tried to talk some sense into the mentally unstable suspect.
- I lost a sense of time while gardening the other day.
- In that sense, we should work together on this project, not compete with one another.
- Katie couldn’t make any sense out of the business proposal she was asked to look over.
- The prideful man was tearing up, but I had the sense to pretend I didn’t notice.
- I can’t see the sense in rating our coworkers’ performances when we haven’t even worked with all of them.
- Samuel thought it made more sense to let the designer come up with the layout instead of trying to incorporate everyone’s input.
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