Common Sense
Accumulated knowledge deemed applicable by the person or group who raises it.
How We Say It
komยทษn sens
Where It Comes From
Translation of Latin sensus communis โ the faculty by which the five senses unify into perception. The shift to mean ordinary practical judgment happened in 17th- and 18th-century English. Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet Common Sense gave the term its political resonance.
How It's Been Used
Invoked as a self-evident standard requiring no further justification โ which is what makes it suspect. Sociology and cognitive psychology have documented that 'common sense' often encodes unexamined assumptions of a particular culture or class. 'It's just common sense' usually signals the end of an argument, not the result of one.