Contextualizebeta

sophont

noun
/ˈsoʊfɑnt/US

Etymology

From sopho- + -ont. First used in the 1966 works by Poul Anderson, coined by his wife Karen Anderson.

  1. derived from -ων
  2. formed as sophont — “sopho- + -ont”

Definitions

  1. An intelligent being

    An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity.

    • Likewise with the psychology of intelligent species. Most sophonts indeed possess basic instincts which diverge more or less from man's. With those of radically alien motivations we have little contact.
    • I'm honored to meet a sophont of the Soro line in person!
    • Evil, they argued, could only have meaning on smaller scales, in the hurt that one sophont does to another.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for sophont. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA