Other forms: perceptions
Perception is the way your senses and mind read the world. Not what is there — what you make of what is there.
Psychology treats it as active rather than passive, since the brain constructs a picture and fills in gaps, which is why optical illusions work at all. There is a second sense about opinion, and public perception of an organisation may be quite different from the facts, which is what reputation management exists to address. The adjective perceptive describes somebody good at noticing.
1nounperceptionThe way in which something is understood through the senses.
“Depth perception is affected by losing an eye.”
2noungenerallyThe way something is generally regarded.
“There is a perception that the service has got worse.”
Perception is a collecting. Latin perceptiō first meant a receiving or a gathering in, from percipiō, so the senses were understood as picking things up rather than merely registering them.
Proto-Indo-European
*keh₂p-
Latin
perceptiō — a receiving or collecting, perception, comprehension
Middle French
percepcion
Middle English
percepcioun
English, today
perception
Built from
From Middle English percepcioun, from Middle French percepcion, from Latin perceptiō (“a receiving or collecting, perception, comprehension”), from perceptus (“perceived, observed”), perfect passive participle of percipiō (“to perceive, observe”); see perceive.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA