kinesthesia means sensation or perception of motion.
kinesthesia is pronounced /ˌkɪnɪsˈθiʒə/.
Why “kinesthesia” is a great word
The conscious perception of movement and position within one's own body, limbs, and muscles. From Greek kinein ("to move") and aisthēsis ("sensation, perception"). Unlike “proprioception,” which is the silent, ceaseless hum of physiological data your nervous system uses to keep you upright, kinesthesia is the *awareness* of that data; and unlike the cross-wired cascade of “synaesthesia,” it is a perception strictly tethered to the physics of the self. It is the precise knowledge of a footfall on a dark staircase, the felt arc of a tennis serve before the ball is struck, and the subtle recalibration of a dancer's spine before the leap—the body’s quiet autobiography written in tendon and torque, the only sense that must move in order to know itself.
Etymology
From kine- + -esthesia. Compare kinesthesis and Greek κιναισθησία (kinaisthisía).
Notes
If this word were borrowed on fully traditional principles it would be cinesthesia (or cinaesthesia); compare cinema from the same root. But more often this Greek root is spelled and pronounced with a k, and in the case of kinesthesia this avoids inconvenient homophony with synaesthesia, the sensation of one type of perception as another (e.g. the perception of smells as colors). Nevertheless the words are still occasionally confused; e.g. http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0849303710&id=_u4sZjHHwCYC&pg=PA581&lpg=PA581&dq=cinesthesia&sig=gFEo5BGoW75XcUVTk44aHGKgGuc.
noun
- Sensation or perception of motion.e.g.“For quotations using this term, see Citations:kinesthesia.”
- Sensation or perception of motion.; The perception of the movement of one's own body, its limbs and muscles etc.
- Sensation or perception of motion.; A spectator's perception of the motion of a performer, or, the effect of the motion of a scene on the spectator.
- Proprioception or static position sense; the perception of the position and posture of the body; also, more broadly, including the motion of the body as well. See usage notes below.
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