Inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to specific stimuli

Usage examples of instinct.

Its author had the instinct for the cryptographic jugular, and he compressed into 64 pages virtually the entire known field of cryptology, including polyalphabetics with mixed alphabets, enciphered code, and cipher devices.

As if lured by some primal instinct, her lips parted slightly and Arian took command of her first kiss.

War automata, possessing no instinct for self-preservation, designed for suicidal combat, would hardly be amenable to entering into any kind of negotiations with a cosmic intruder.

Only instinct kept him in the saddle while Mahvros, well-trained, battlewise and intelligent animal that he was, continued on to the proper place, then wheeled about just ahead of Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

It is from here that behaviour and instinct are determined, providing - automatically - as a reflection of what lies within, the sense organs, the limbs, the DNA, the cell and organ structure, the molecular and bioelectrical patternings - everything with which we are presently familiar and much more which we have yet to uncover.

The bioengineering tour de force that had created Cerberi had also screwed up their hereditary instincts.

But instinct told her that the blackmailer would seek her out and if it took a while to hunt her down, she might be able to use that time to do something constructive.

His gut instinct was that they were gone, that they had left Bonita Vista, either on their own or via some forced evacuation, and though he had no evidence to back him up, he told Jeremy his feeling.

Joel Flint and Signer Canova too, with scattered among them and marking the date of that death too, the cautiously worded advertisements in Variety and Billboard, using the new changed name and no takers probably, since Signer Canova the Great was already dead then and already serving his purgatory in this circus for six months and that circus for eightbandsman, ringman, Bornean wild man, down to the last stage where he touched bottom: the travelling from country town to country town with a roulette wheel wired against imitation watches and pistols which would not shoot, until one day instinct perhaps showed him one more chance to use the gift again.

His natural tendency once had been to look upon a person with whom he was talking, but Briza had wasted no time in beating that instinct out of him.

So when he saw the flash, heard the gun shot, felt that ball smack into the boat at the waterline, however much he may have felt like killing himself before, the idea that someone was deliberately trying to murder him must have brought all his natural instincts toward self-survival leaping to the surface, must have armed and nerved him with the decision to escape, if for no better reason than to get the bushwacking coward who was trying to get him.

But the instinct to live outlasts human nature in these creatures, and cancels fear.

Every protective instinct rose up, every possessive Carpathian trait existing in him, his imprinted instincts all told him she was there.

I could arrest criminals on gut instinct, Chickasaw County would have a lot less crime.

A pronounced mannerist he was no less a man of strength, and even in his shadow-saturated colors a painter with the color instinct.