• IPA: /ˈɪn.stɪŋkt/

instinct

1. A natural or inherent impulse or behaviour.

   Many animals fear fire by instinct.

   • c. 1593, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act II, scene iii]:

     By a divine instinct, men's minds mistrust / Ensuing dangers.

2. An intuitive reaction not based on rational conscious thought.

   an instinct for order; to be modest by instinct

   Debbie's instinct was to distrust John.

• French: instinct
• German: Instinkt
• Italian: istinto
• Portuguese: instinto
• Russian: инсти́нкт
• Spanish: instinto

instinct

1. (archaic) Imbued, charged (with something).
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 6”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     The chariot of paternal deity […] / Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed / By four cherubic shapes.

   • a noble performance, instinct with sound principle

   • 1857, Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

     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 pupils instinct with fire.

   • 1928, HP Lovecraft, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’:

     This thing, which seemed instinct 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.