Definition of "appreciation" []

• Recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things. (noun)
• A judgment or opinion, especially a favorable one. (noun)
• An expression of gratitude. (noun)
• Awareness or delicate perception, especially of aesthetic qualities or values. (noun)
• A rise in value or price, especially over time. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In fact, the spiritual teacher Esther Hicks says she prefers the word "appreciation" to "gratitude," because the latter carts up the struggles that got us here, while appreciation comes from a purer place of joy."
• "This appreciation is a subsidiary requirement of tact, such acts of praise or dispraise functioning as expressions of beliefs which imply costs or benefits in terms of recognition of relative status."
• "'When your people made us robots, you left out of us certain faculties, and among these is what you call appreciation of beauty."