Noun: Knowledge or skill that you gain over time from doing, seeing, or feeling things. Verb: To go through an event or feeling personally.
From Latin *experientia* ‘a trial, proof’, from *experiri* ‘to try, test’. The root *per-* is about ‘trying’ or ‘risking’, as in ‘peril’.
Experience originally meant ‘what you find out by trying something, even at some risk.’ That’s why two people can live through the same event but walk away with totally different ‘experience’—it’s partly about what you dared to notice and learn.
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