# insensate
## English
### Etymology 1

Learned borrowing from Latin īnsēnsātus.

#### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ɪnˈsɛn.sət/
** Audio (Southern England):(file)

#### Adjective

insensate (comparative more insensate, superlative most insensate)
* Having no sensation or consciousness; unconscious; inanimate.
** 1816, Lord Byron, Diodati:Since thus divided — equal must it be If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea; It may be both — but one day end it must In the dark union of insensate dust.
** 1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Moriturus:If I might be Insensate matter With sensate me Sitting within, Harking and prying, I might begin To dicker with dying.
* Senseless; foolish; irrational.
** 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 304:[…] the sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool, were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh;—[…]
** 1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 13, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears. . . . Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.
** 1913, Joseph Conrad, “ch. 6”, in Chance:[…] the romping girl teased her . . . and was always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or other.
** 1918, Louis Joseph Vance, “ch. 12”, in The False Faces:But in his insensate passion for revenge upon one who had all but murdered him, he had forgotten all else but the moment's specious opportunity.
* Unfeeling, heartless, cruel, insensitive.
** 1847, Anne Brontë, “ch. 36”, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:I was cold-hearted, hard, insensate.
** 1904, Frank Norris, “ch. 6”, in A Man's Woman:That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point.
** 1917, Frank L. Packard, “ch. 8”, in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale:[…] the most cold-blooded, callous murders and robberies, the work, on the face of it, of a well-organized band of thugs, brutal, insensate, little better than fiends.
* (medicine, physiology) Not responsive to sensory stimuli.
** 1958 June, Edward B. Schlesinger, “Trigeminal Neuralgia”, in American Journal of Nursing, volume 58, number 6, page 854:If the ophthalmic branch is cut the patient must be told about the hazards of having an insensate cornea.
** 2004 Aug. 1, Jeff G. van Baal, “Surgical Treatment of the Infected Diabetic Foot”, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, volume 39, page S126:The presence of severe pain with a deep plantar foot infection in a diabetic patient is often the first alarming symptom, especially in a patient with a previously insensate foot.
** 2005 Feb. 5, “Minerva”, in BMJ: British Medical Journal, volume 330, number 7486, page . 316:The innocuous trauma of high pressure jets and bubble massage to the insensate breast and back areas had caused the bruising seen in the picture.

##### Antonyms

* (antonym(s) of “having no sensation or consciousness”): sentient

##### Translations
### Etymology 2

From the substantivation of the above adjective. See -ate (noun-forming suffix).

#### Noun

insensate (plural insensates)
* One who is insensate.
** 1873, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 22”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes:Here, at any rate, hostility did not assume that slow and sickening form. It was a cosmic agency, active, lashing, eager for conquest: determination; not an insensate standing in the way.

### Etymology 3

From Latin īnsēnsātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix).

#### Verb

insensate (third-person singular simple present insensates, present participle insensating, simple past and past participle insensated)
* (rare) To render insensate; to deprive of sensation or consciousness.
** 1915, James Oliver Curwood, “ch. 24”, in God's Country And the Woman‎:And this thought, blinding them to all else, insensating them to all emotions but that of vengeance, was thought of Josephine.
** 2002, Shony A. Braun, My Heart Is a Violin‎, →ISBN, page 60:The train moved on again, keeping us prisoners in a stench-filled car, starving, suffocating, insensated.

### References

* John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “insensate”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

### Anagrams

* antisense

## Italian
### Adjective

insensate f pl
* feminine plural of insensato

### Noun

insensate f pl
* plural of insensata

### Anagrams

* annessite, estensina

## Latin
### Adjective

īnsēnsāte
* vocative masculine singular of īnsēnsātus