A consensus is the point where a group stops arguing and settles on one answer everybody can live with. After two hours the committee reached a consensus: the roof gets fixed first, the car park waits.
Consensus does not mean everyone got what they wanted; it means nobody objects strongly enough to keep fighting. You reach, build or arrive at a consensus, and there is nearly always a consensus ON or ABOUT something. In science and academia it names the settled majority view — the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth — and disagreeing with it is a position you have to argue for. The adjective is consensual, and a decision made this way is a consensus decision. Spelling trap: consensus belongs to consent, not to census, so it takes an s in the middle.
1nounconsensusGeneral agreement among the members of a group.
“The board reached a consensus after a long and bad-tempered debate.”
synonyms: agreement, common ground
2nounsettledThe settled view held by most experts in a field.
“The scientific consensus is that the ice is melting faster than predicted.”
consensus is a form of agreement.
Consensus is Latin arriving almost untouched: cōnsēnsus, 'agreement', from cōnsentiō, which literally means to feel together. Consent is the same Latin verb reaching English by a different road. A consensus, at root, is not a vote counted but a room that has come round to feeling the same way.
Proto-Indo-European
*sent-
Latin
cōnsēnsus — agreement, accordance, unanimity
English, today
consensus
Built from
Borrowed from Latin cōnsēnsus (“agreement, accordance, unanimity”), from cōnsentiō (“feel together; agree”); see consent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA