nous

• noos, nouse

Borrowed from Ancient Greek νοῦς (noûs) or νόος (nóos, “mind”).

• (UK) enPR: nous, IPA^(key): /naʊs/
• Rhymes: -aʊs

• (US) enPR: noo͞s, IPA^(key): /nuːs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

nous (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) The mind or intellect, reason, both rational and emotional
   • 1900, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes:

     I feel the will to roam, to learn
     By test, experience, nous,
     That fire is hot and ocean deep,
     And wolves carnivorous.

2. In Neoplatonism, the divine reason, regarded as first divine emanation.
3. Common sense; practical intelligence.
   • 1907, E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey, Uniform edition, Edward Arnold, Part I, I, page 19:

     There is nothing original in absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the lower classes have no nous.

   • 2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower:

     The emerging African elite felt little affection for the wahindi, seen as tight-fisted, snooty and brazenly colour-conscious, but its members knew they needed its business nous.

• Onsu, Osun, Suon, UNOS, Unos, onus, ouns

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [ˈnɔws]
• Hyphenation: nous
• Rhymes: -ɔws

nous

1. masculine plural of nou (“new”)

nous

1. plural of nou (“nine”)

nous

1. plural of nou (“nut”)

nous

1. second-person singular present indicative of noure

• IPA^(key): /nu/, (before a vowel) /nu.z‿/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophones: noue, nouent, noues

Inherited from Middle French nous, from Old French nous, nos, from Latin nōs, from Proto-Italic *nōs.

In several dialects of French, je may be used instead of nous (j'allons instead of nous allons, je voyons instead of nous voyons etc.), this use was perceived as peasant-like and thus often mocked since the 15th century (for example by Molière). However this use survived and spread in various regions of the so-called domaine d'oïl (linguistic area starting above Auvergne where the oïl varieties of Romance developed from the 4th or 5th century). The regions of France where this use of je (from Latin ego "I") instead of nous, nos (from Latin nos, "we") was recorded are Normandy, Romance-speaking Brittany, Poitou and Anjou, Champagne, Ardennes, Bourgogne and Franche-Comté, Dauphiné, Berry, Touraine, Orléanais, Bourbonnais, Maine. See cognates in regional languages in France: Angevin je and , Bourbonnais-Berrichon je and , Bourguignon i and , Champenois ju and , Franc-Comtois i and nôs, Gallo je and nouz, Lorrain nos, Norman je and nos, Orléanais je and , Picard nos, Poitevin-Saintongeais i/jhe and , Franco-Provençal nos, Occitan nosautres (Provençal nousautes), Catalan nosaltres, Corsican noi.

nous (first-person plural, singular je, object nous, emphatic nous, possessive determiner notre)

1. the plural personal pronoun in the first person:
   1. (subject pronoun) we

      Synonym: on (informal)

   2. (object pronoun) us, to us
2. (royal, historical) we (as the royal we)

From Ancient Greek νοῦς (noûs) or νόος (nóos, “mind”).

nous m (plural nous)

1. the nous, (divine) reason in philosophy

• “nous”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From Old French nous.

nous

1. we (subject pronoun)
2. ourselves (reflexive pronoun)

• French: nous

From Latin nōs.

• IPA^(key): /nus/

nous

1. alternative form of nos

From Old French nous.

nous

1. we