Definition of "emotion" []

• A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love. (noun)
• A state of mental agitation or disturbance: spoke unsteadily in a voice that betrayed his emotion. See Synonyms at feeling. (noun)
• The part of the consciousness that involves feeling; sensibility: "The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect” ( Isaac Bashevis Singer). (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.

• "Consequently, what are here labeled “emotion views” are divided into those that understand love to be a particular kind of evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object, whether that response is merely occurrent or dispositional (˜emotions proper,™ see Section 5.1, below), and those that understand love to involve a collection of related and interconnected emotions proper (˜emotion complexes,™ see Section 5.2, below)."
• "QUOTATION: Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, —emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy."
• "But it was of no use; she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet, —emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance."