noun
definition
A natural or inherent impulse or behaviour.
example
Many animals fear fire by instinct.
definition
An intuitive reaction not based on rational conscious thought.
example
Debbie's instinct was to distrust John.
adjective
definition
Imbued, charged (with something).
Examples of instinct in a Sentence
The moment had made him acutely aware of the instinct to replicate.
It's just an instinct I have about him.
He wasn't sure which instinct was stronger.
The instinct that warned him flared again.
You have a natural instinct for the simple but elegant.
She'd ignored the instinct at her apartment, and that ended in disaster.
He answered by instinct, yet, in spite of not thinking of his answer, had he been given more time to consider, it would have remained the same.
It was less an instinct and more of an absence of something.
His instinct told him there was something else going on aside from the insurgents and Lana leaving.
You promise to tell me if your maternal instinct kicks in?
Natasha too, with her quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother's condition.
Instinct told her his threat wasn't simply the liquor talking.
Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain?
There was a reason he banned thoughts of Darian and Claire from his mind, an instinct he'd never been able to face in all the years since Darian's death.
Oh, to have had this instinct years ago, when she met Wynn!
He followed the instinct that led him to Deidre and trotted up the stairs leading to the top of the fortress.
On instinct, Brady opened the channel to Lana's net.
Tree climbing, or climbing in general, is a basic instinct for a cat.
Maybe she was spooked tonight, but long ago she had learned to listen to that instinct... gut feeling, some might call it.
She paused before him, resisting the instinct to stick out her hand for a handshake.
Late September aroused the instinct to prepare the den for winter — so to speak.
Nor can it be said that the instinct of the saint was altogether at fault.
The prey is sometimes stung in the neighbourhood of the nerve ganglia, so that it is paralysed but not killed, the grub of the fossorial wasp devouring its victim alive; but this instinct varies in perfection, and in many cases the larva flourishes equally whether its prey be killed or not.
In this instinct we have a correspondence with the habits of social wasps and bees.
Yet it may be thought that the usual instinct of the " diggingwasps " to capture and store up food in an underground burrow for the benefit of offspring which they will never see is even more surprising.
These qualities, joined to a natural military instinct developed by much study and backed by a powerful ambition, marked him out early and brought him very quickly to the front.
The cause of poetry is man's instinct of representation and his love of representations caused by the pleasure of learning.
Instinct suggested that she wanted to be protected.
In fact, much of the skills required of a good investigator involves a great deal of insight and instinct that is difficult to teach, and often comes naturally for many people.
She dismissed the uneasy instinct.
Long-buried rage was bubbling upward, along with the tiny instinct he'd squashed thousands of years ago.
Gabriel hugged her more tightly out of instinct.
He resisted the instinct that told him he needed to peek into her thoughts.
Rhyn reacted out of instinct.
Jackson's instinct encouraged him to hold her and calm himself enough to calm her.
Lana sank onto the couch, not liking the instinct that told her she was right about him.
A different instinct went off in Darian's mind, one that recognized the look on the Black God's face as being another sign Jenn was in more trouble than expected.
The Original Watcher appeared, confirming her instinct.
But the growth and development of the northern communal movement, though strong and instinct with life, was slower and less tempestuous than the Flemish.
Tone himself admitted that with him hatred of England had always been "rather an instinct than a principle," though until his views should become more generally accepted in Ireland he was prepared to work for reform as distinguished from revolution.
Though possessing a complete copulatory apparatus and producing large quantities of spermatozoa, they have lost their sexual instinct and play no part in the economy of the species.
With the instinct of a true statesman, he felt the pulse of the people, divined their need for prestige, and their preference for a government heavy-handed rather than lax.
The theist believes that he can further trace many incomplete workings of the monothesitic instinct in the history of religion.
To Aristotle the whole of nature is instinct with a vital impulse towards some higher manifestation.
In his doctrine of human development he does indeed recognize an early stage of existence in which our species was dominated by sensuous enjoyment and instinct.
After the death of Margaret Plays, her widower found, with the peculiar instinct of his race, a second well-endowed wife.
In the European species of Sitaris and Meloe these little larvae have the instinct of clinging to any hairy object.
The old tendency illustrated by the outcome of the revolutionary movements of 1848 was once more in evidence - the tendency of merely artificial theories of democratic liberty to succumb to the immemorial instinct of race and race ascendancy.
As a result it has been far easier for the American than for the European railway builder to take advantage of the speculative instinct in obtaining money.
The protective instinct was responsible for much of this interference with the natural impulse of men of various creeds towards mutual esteem and forbearance.