# attention
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English attencioun, borrowed from Latin attentio, attentionis, from attendere, past participle attentus (“to attend, give heed to”); see attend.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /əˈtɛn.ʃən/
* Audio (General American):(file)

### Noun

attention (countable and uncountable, plural attentions)
* (uncountable) Mental focus.
    Synonyms: heed, notice; see also Thesaurus:attention
    Please direct your attention to the following words.
** 1881, John Younger, “Introductory Chapter”, in Autobiography of John Younger, Shoemaker, St. Boswells‎, Kelso, Scotland: J. & J.H. Rutherfurd, pages x–xi:Most of the pictures of common life that we meet with in books are drawn in the shape of novels, with the view of attracting the attention of indolent readers; the question with authors being, not of what can I inform my neighbour by which he may be improved in head or heart, mind or morals? but what is the fashion of public taste? that by pandering to it I may secure sale and applause! Hence the present jumble of brains, the rack of invention to excite, supply, and cram the public appetite, all so agape after tales of the marvellous, till the picture of life is overwrought, and the image of nature bedaubed to disgust.
** 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity.
** 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.
** 1959, Mari Sandoz, “Bone Joe and the Smokin' Woman”, in Hostiles and Friendlies: Selected Short Writings‎:Lesper Killey was at her shoulder, jerking at the wash-faded denim of her jumper to get her attention.
** 2012 March, William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter, “The British Longitude Act Reconsidered”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 2, page 87:But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.
* (countable) An action or remark expressing concern for or interest in someone or something, especially romantic interest.
** 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 3, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper.
** 1910, Stephen Leacock, “How to Avoid Getting Married,”, in Literary Lapses:For some time past I have been the recipient of very marked attentions from a young lady.
* (uncountable, military) A state of alertness in the standing position.
    The company will now come to attention.
* (uncountable, machine learning) A kind of prioritisation technique in neural networks that assigns soft weights between tokens from two (or more) input sequences in order to compute the required output.
** 2021, Savas Yildirim, Meysam Asgari-Chenaghlu, Mastering Transformers […] , Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 26:The attention mechanism is an important part of these models and plays a very crucial role. Before Transformer models, the attention mechanism was proposed as a helper for improving conventional DL models such as RNNs.

#### Derived terms

* at attention
* attentional
* attention deficit disorder
* attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
* attention economy
* attention getter
* attention-grabbing
* attentionless
* attention line
* attention seeker, attention-seeker, attention-seeking
* attention span
* attention whore
* attract attention
* care and attention
* center of attention, centre of attention
* cross-attention
* disattention
* draw attention
* hyperattention
* meta-attention
* nonattention
* overattention
* pay attention
* preattention
* self-attention
* stand at attention
* stand to attention
* unattention
* underattention

#### Related terms

* attentive

#### Collocations

* slight attention
* strict attention
* careful attention
* extra attention
* little attention
* excessive attention
* special attention
* immediate attention
* close attention
* explicit attention
* full attention
* partial attention
* medical attention
* urgent attention
* public attention
* sustained attention
* utmost attention
* explicit attention
* need attention
* pay attention
* show attention
* appreciate someone's attention
* require attention
* raise attention

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Interjection

attention
* (military) Used as a command to bring soldiers to the attention position.
* A call for people to be quiet/stop doing what they are presently doing and pay heed to what they are to be told or shown.

#### Translations
### Further reading

* “attention”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “attention”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

### Anagrams

* Antonetti, tentation

## French
### Etymology

Borrowed from Latin attentiōnem.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /a.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

attention f (uncountable)
* attention (mental focus)
* vigilance
    Synonym: vigilance
* attention (concern for)
* attention (interest in)
    Synonyms: curiosité, intérêt
* consideration, thoughtfulness

#### Derived terms

* attentionnel
* faire attention
* prêter attention

#### Related terms

* attendre
* attentif

### Interjection

attention !
* look out! watch out! careful!

### Further reading

* “attention”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

### Anagrams

* tentation