of an alien or machine: intelligent; having human-like intelligence
When EXPLORATION blazed through space…And found men, sapient, on Mars, He gained renown’s most honored place.
‘I ain’t paid to get lectured by cockroaches.’ ‘Is, one, inaccurate statement—terrestrial cockroach is not sapient being. Is, two obviously hostile manifestation.’
It was inhabited by a sapient humanoid race, and some of them were civilized enough to put it in Class V, and Colonial Office doctrine on Class V planets was rigid.
Because the dragon wore protective clothing, and so was sapient? Sapient corpses were deliberately allowed to remain, Muller realized.
Speaker, no sapient being ever interrupts a defense mechanism.
There were several hundred planets in the Unity—and nearly as many more outside it—bearing sapient life; and over a hundred of them must have been represented in the crowds below.
The cataclysmic events should have destroyed all sapient life on the planet.
The chimp scientist grimaced. His lips curled back to display an array of large, yellowed, buck teeth. At the moment, in spite of the enlarged globe of his cranium, his outthrust jaw, and his opposable thumbs, he looked more like an angry ape than a sapient scientist.
Vulcans dreamed, of course—most sapient creatures do.
The poet’s eyes rose to fix the surviving biped in their multilenticular stare. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean that two sapient beings are dead.’
Besides fellow humans he worked closely with sapient machines, and some of them got to be friends too, of an eerie kind.
Most sapient species can’t travel. They would need life support so extensive that they could not perceive the Universe beyond.
I do not worry…. Worry is for sapient beings, and I am not sapient. You are projecting your own nature on to me…. I am a machine.
antedating 1935
Bob Olsen, in Amazing Stories
Last modified 2021-01-24 14:09:00
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.