FromLatinīnstīnctus, past participle ofīnstinguō(“to incite, to instigate”), fromin(“in, on”) +stinguō(“to prick”).Thisetymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.
In spite of these qualifications, the broad distinction betweeninstinct and habit is undeniable. To take extreme cases, every animal at birth can take food by instinct, before it has had opportunity to learn; on the other hand, no one can ride a bicycle by instinct, though, after learning, the necessary movements become just as automatic as if they were instinctive.
An intuitive reaction not based on rational conscious thought.
1667,John Milton, “Book VI”, inParadise Lost.[…], London:[…] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker[…];[a]nd by Robert Boulter[…];[a]nd Matthias Walker,[…],→OCLC; republished asParadise Lost in Ten Books:[…], London: Basil Montagu Pickering[…],1873,→OCLC:
The chariot of paternal deity[…] / Itselfinstinct with spirit, but convoyed / By four cherubic shapes.
1838,Henry Brougham,Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III:
Her eyes, whose colour I had not at first known, so dim were they with repressed tears, so shadowed with ceaseless dejection, now, lit by a ray of the sunshine that cheered her heart, revealed irids of bright hazel – irids large and full, screened with long lashes; and pupilsinstinct with fire.
1899, John Buchan,No Man's Land:
It was a most Bedlamite catalogue of horrors, which, if true, made the wholesome moors a placeinstinct with tragedy.
This thing, which seemedinstinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.
