Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <vocabulary>
Title: Is "hunch" the right word for this situation?
Question: When I was leaving home for a language learning center, something inside my mind was trying to tell me to walk instead of taking a bus or I would be late for the class. I might be too tired to walk so I chose the bus, and then I was late.   Given that situation, is it formal to use "hunch" in the following sentence?    A  hunch  was trying to stop me from taking a bus to the English learning center.   Or using the sixth sense is better?

Answers:
sents: text: A "hunch" doesn't seem like quite the right word here.
text: It would be possible to say "I had a hunch that, if I took the bus I would be late.
text: " A simple word to use instead might be "feeling": "I had a feeling that I should avoid the bus".
text: Or if you want quite formal: "I had a premonition that if I took the bus I'd be late.
text: " The word "intuition" is another possibility.
text: I would prefer these to "sixth sense" in this context.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/24231/James K
score: 19
sents: text: To add onto the good answers people have already given, I wanted to address the general form of these types of sentences.
text: As Tᴚoɯɐuo already mentioned, hunches are not actors who try to make you do things, but merely inform you.
text: This is true of any of the other words or phrase you may use instead.
text: You can see that in James K's example:
text: I had a hunch that if I took the bus I would be late.
text: In this example you can see that hunch has been changed to merely inform your decision-making, rather than actively make the decision by stopping you.
text: However, other feelings and emotions can take a more active role.
text: Something like:
text: My fear was trying to stop me from entering the building.
text: Fear makes more sense in this sentence because the effects of fear on a person are more involuntary and out of a person's control.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/54646/Cantalouping
score: 9
sents: text: Try gut feeling A gut feeling was trying to stop me from taking a bus to the English learning center.
text: Or alternatively intuition might be correct too
text: My intuition was telling me to walk instead of taking the bus.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/1182/user13267
score: 8
sents: text: I think I would say: Something told me not to take the bus to the English learning center.
text: "Something told me" is an expression for the feeling you described -- when an instinct tells you something is true or that you should act in a certain way, even though you have no concrete reason for doing so.
text: You might also use it like:
text: He said he was at school, but something tells me he was at the movies with his friends.
text: Your use of "hunch" is certainly understandable here, and perhaps you could say that when you didn't take the bus you were "acting on a hunch".
text: But hunches are usually objects, not subjects.
text: To say that the hunch "told you" something doesn't sound totally natural to me.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/25879/Rob
score: 3
sents: text: How about "premonition"?
text: From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
text: [wn]: premonition n 1: a feeling of evil to come; "a steadily escalating sense of foreboding"
text: ; "the lawyer had a presentiment that the judge would dismiss the case" [syn: {foreboding}, {premonition}, {presentiment}, {boding}] 2: an early warning about a future event [syn: {forewarning}, {premonition}]
text: Actually, a few others in this definition are not bad on their own...
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/54944/user54944
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
"Something told me" is commonly used in this context. However, although the phrase is understandable, to say that the hunch "told you" something doesn't sound totally natural. "Hunches"  are usually objects, not subjects.
Something told me is an expression for a feeling -- when an instinct tells you something is true or that you should act in a certain way