Pozornost

Pozornost is a Slavic noun commonly translated into English as "attention," "attentiveness," or "courtesy." It appears in several West and South Slavic languages (for example Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian), with minor orthographic or diacritical differences. The word is related to the root pozor, a family of forms used to indicate watchfulness or the act of looking.

In ordinary speech, pozornost denotes the cognitive act of directing awareness toward a stimulus, person or task. It can describe momentary alertness (paying attention to a sound), sustained focus (concentrating on work) or social attentiveness (courteous behavior, consideration). Adjectival and verb forms derived from the same root convey related meanings such as "attentive" or "to make attentive."

In psychology and cognitive science, attention is studied as a set of processes that select and prioritize sensory information. Common distinctions include selective attention (focusing on relevant stimuli), sustained attention (maintaining focus over time), and divided attention (managing multiple tasks). These concepts map onto the everyday meanings encapsulated by the term pozornost.

As a lexical item, pozornost is used in idioms and set phrases and appears in formal, colloquial and literary registers. Its usage and connotations vary by language and context, spanning neutral descriptions of mental processes to evaluations of social behavior.