ex·pe·ri·ence – [ik-speer-ee-uhns]

noun, verb, -enced, -enc·ing.

noun
1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something: My encounter with the bear in the woods was a frightening experience.
2. the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something: business experience.
3. the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time: to learn from experience; the range of human experience.
4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone: a man of experience.
5. Philosophy . the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.
verb (used with object)
6. to have experience of; meet with; undergo; feel: to experience nausea.
7. to learn by experience.

Idiom
8. experience religion, to undergo a spiritual conversion by which one gains or regains faith in God.

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English  < Latin experientia,  equivalent to experient-  (stem of experiēns,  past participle of experīrī  to try, test; see ex-1 , peril) + -ia  noun suffix; see -ence

Synonyms
6.  encounter, know, endure, suffer. Experience, undergo  refer to encountering situations, conditions, etc., in life, or to having certain sensations or feelings. Experience  implies being affected by what one meets with: to experience a change of heart, bitter disappointment. Undergo  usually refers to the bearing or enduring of something hard, difficult, disagreeable, or dangerous: to undergo severe hardships, an operation.