Feeling is what you experience inside yourself: emotions like happiness, anger, or nervousness, and physical sensations like hunger, tiredness, or the sting of a scraped knee.

When you say “I have a feeling it's going to rain,” you mean you sense something without quite knowing why. When you describe “the feeling of diving into a cold pool on a hot day,” you're talking about that rush of physical sensation. When you talk about your feelings after your team loses a close game, you mean the disappointment, frustration, or sadness you experience.

Feelings can be simple or complicated. You might feel purely happy when you find money on the sidewalk, but have mixed feelings about moving to a new school: excited about making new friends but sad about leaving old ones behind.

Physical feelings happen in your body: the feeling of sand between your toes or butterflies in your stomach before a presentation. Emotional feelings happen in your mind and heart: pride, jealousy, contentment, fear. Often they're connected. When you feel nervous (an emotion), your heart might race and your palms might sweat (physical feelings).

People sometimes say they feel something is true, meaning they believe it intuitively. A scientist might say they have a feeling their experiment will work, even before testing proves it.