conscience
inner sense of right and wrong
Roots
- com-: with, together, complete, or intensified
- sci / scire: know, understand, or be aware
Other words with the sci / scire root
- conscientious: careful and guided by duty or conscience
- conscious: awake or aware
- prescience: knowledge of events before they happen
- prescient: seeming to know what will happen before it does
- science: organized knowledge tested by observation
Con- gives with; sci gives know. Conscience is the knowledge you hold with yourself when something feels right or wrong.
His conscience would not let him blame someone else.
Conscience is not just a moral word floating alone. It carries the feeling of knowing with yourself: the private awareness that something is right, wrong, clean, or crooked.