See sophont on Wiktionary
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"etymology_text": "From sopho- + -ont. First used in the 1966 works by Poul Anderson, coined by his wife Karen Anderson.",
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"name": "Artificial intelligence",
"orig": "en:Artificial intelligence",
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"name": "Celestial inhabitants",
"orig": "en:Celestial inhabitants",
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"examples": [
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"ref": "1966, Poul Anderson, Trouble Twisters:",
"text": "Likewise with the psychology of intelligent species. Most sophonts indeed possess basic instincts which diverge more or less from man's. With those of radically alien motivations we have little contact.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1980, David Brin, Sundiver, page 50:",
"text": "I'm honored to meet a sophont of the Soro line in person!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1992, Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Tor Books, page 406:",
"text": "Evil, they argued, could only have meaning on smaller scales, in the hurt that one sophont does to another.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1997, Spider Robinson, Lifehouse, Baen Books, page 2:",
"text": "Only one sophont appeared to be involved—and not a sophisticated one.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity."
],
"id": "en-sophont-en-noun-BZfPHFEL",
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"machine",
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"artificial intelligence",
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"(chiefly science fiction) An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity."
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"synonyms": [
{
"word": "sentient"
}
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"ipa": "/ˈsoʊfɑnt/",
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"word": "sophont"
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"ref": "1966, Poul Anderson, Trouble Twisters:",
"text": "Likewise with the psychology of intelligent species. Most sophonts indeed possess basic instincts which diverge more or less from man's. With those of radically alien motivations we have little contact.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1980, David Brin, Sundiver, page 50:",
"text": "I'm honored to meet a sophont of the Soro line in person!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1992, Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Tor Books, page 406:",
"text": "Evil, they argued, could only have meaning on smaller scales, in the hurt that one sophont does to another.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1997, Spider Robinson, Lifehouse, Baen Books, page 2:",
"text": "Only one sophont appeared to be involved—and not a sophisticated one.",
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"(chiefly science fiction) An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity."
],
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"literature",
"media",
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"ipa": "/ˈsoʊfɑnt/",
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"synonyms": [
{
"word": "sentient"
}
],
"word": "sophont"
}
Download raw JSONL data for sophont meaning in All languages combined (2.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (05fdf6b and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.