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Psychic vs Psionics - What's the difference?

psychic | psionics |

As nouns the difference between psychic and psionics

is that psychic is a person who possesses, or appears to possess, extra-sensory abilities such as precognition, clairvoyance and telepathy, or who appears to be susceptible to paranormal or supernatural influence while psionics is (science fiction) mental powers that affect physical matter, such as telekinesis.

As an adjective psychic

is relating to the abilities of a psychic.

psychic

Noun

(en noun)
  • A person who possesses, or appears to possess, extra-sensory abilities such as precognition, clairvoyance and telepathy, or who appears to be susceptible to paranormal or supernatural influence.
  • A person who supposedly contacts the dead. A medium.
  • (gnosticism) In gnostic theologian Valentinus' triadic grouping of man the second type; a person focused on intellectual reality (the other two being hylic and pneumatic).
  • References

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Relating to the abilities of a psychic.
  • You must be psychic - I was just about to say that.
    She is a psychic person - she hears messages from beyond.
  • Relating to the psyche.
  • * 1967 , , The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise
  • A pathological process called 'psychiatrosis' may well be found, by the same methods, to be a delineable entity, with somatic correlates, and psychic mechanisms

    psionics

    Noun

    (-)
  • (science fiction) Mental powers that affect physical matter, such as telekinesis.
  • * 1976 , Reginald Bretnor, The Craft of Science Fiction
  • In any case, psionics appears quite legitimately in science fiction.
  • * 1998 , Gary Westfahl, The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction
  • In the 1960s, Campbell abandoned his public obsessions with psionics and pseudo-science.