sensu

Sensu is a term with multiple meanings in different languages and domains.

In Japanese culture, sensu (扇子) refers to a folding hand fan made of paper or fabric mounted on a ribbed frame, usually of bamboo or wood. Folding fans are used for cooling, in traditional dance and theater, and as decorative objects. They are distinct from uchiwa, which are non-folding fans.

In scholarly and scientific use, sensu is a Latin preposition meaning “in the sense of.” It appears in phrases such as sensu lato (in the broad sense) and sensu stricto (in the strict sense). In biology and taxonomy, these qualifiers indicate how broadly or narrowly a taxon is circumscribed, helping to clarify interpretation of species groups or other classifications.

In information technology, Sensu is the name of an open-source monitoring framework and related products. Sensu Core and the later Sensu Go provide a client/server architecture for collecting and processing health checks and alerts from software and infrastructure. The platform supports event pipelines, extension points, and integrations with common monitoring ecosystems, enabling teams to implement checks as code and to automate responses.

Etymology-wise, sensu derives from Latin and is primarily used in academic contexts to denote sense or interpretation. Across its uses, sensu thus covers culture, science, and technology in distinct but widely encountered ways.