sensationnoun/sɛnˈseɪʃən/

• 1

  A physical feeling or perception from something that comes into contact with the body; something sensed.

  • Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.
  • Confining ourselves, for the moment, to sensations, we find that there are different degrees of publicity attaching to different sorts of sensations. If you feel a toothache when the other people in the room do not, you are in no way surprised; but if you hear a clap of thunder when they do not, you begin to be alarmed as to your mental condition.
• 2

  human-sciencesmedicinephysiologyExcitation of sensory organs.

  • Coordinate term: perception
  • In the dead state all is apparently without motion. No agent within indicates design, intelligence, or foresight: there is no respiration; […] no sensation; […]
• 3

  A widespread reaction of interest or excitement.

  • “Two or three months more went by; the public were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and sensations, surpassing those of the Tichbourne case, were looked forward to with palpitating interest. […]”
  • Young Derby's odd genius developed remarkably, and in his eighteenth year his collected nightmare-lyrics made a real sensation when issued under the title Azathoth and Other Horrors.
• 4

  datedA remarkable person.

  • You truly are a sensation.
• 5

  archaicslangA small serving of gin or sherry.

  • A Sensation . . . . Half-a-glass of sherry.
  • When men go into a 'sluicery' for a 'sensation,' a 'drain,' or a 'common sewer,' they call the glass of gin they seek, in allusion to the juniper, a 'nipper,' or, more briefly, a 'nip,' occasionally a 'bite,' and not unfrequently it turns out a 'flogger.'