insensate
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪnˈsɛn.sət/
Forms: form: more insensate
form: most insensate
Etymology: Learned borrowing from Latin īnsēnsātus.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1816, Lord Byron, Diodati:
text: If I might be
Insensate matter
With sensate me
Sitting within,
Harking and prying,
I might begin
To dicker with dying.
ref: 1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Moriturus:
glosses: Having no sensation or consciousness; unconscious; inanimate.
examples: text: […]the sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool, were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh;—[…]
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 13, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:
text: […]the romping girl teased her . . . and was always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or other.
ref: 1913, Joseph Conrad, “ch. 6”, in Chance:
text: 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.
ref: 1918, Louis Joseph Vance, “ch. 12”, in The False Faces:
glosses: Senseless; foolish; irrational; thoughtless.
examples: text: I was cold-hearted, hard, insensate.
ref: 1847, Anne Brontë, “ch. 36”, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
text: That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point.
ref: 1904, Frank Norris, “ch. 6”, in A Man's Woman:
text: […]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.
ref: 1917, Frank L. Packard, “ch. 8”, in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale:
glosses: Unfeeling, heartless, cruel, insensitive.
examples: text: If the ophthalmic branch is cut the patient must be told about the hazards of having an insensate cornea.
ref: 1958 June, Edward B. Schlesinger, “Trigeminal Neuralgia”, in American Journal of Nursing, volume 58, number 6, page 854:
text: 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.
ref: 2004 Aug. 1, Jeff G. van Baal, “Surgical Treatment of the Infected Diabetic Foot”, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, volume 39, page S126:
text: 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.
ref: 2005 Feb. 5, “Minerva”, in BMJ: British Medical Journal, volume 330, number 7486, page . 316:
topics: medicine
physiology
sciences
glosses: Not responsive to sensory stimuli; unfeeling.
Derived terms: insensately
insensateness