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Allin

insensitive

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United States//ɪnˈsɛnsɪtɪv//

Expressing or feeling little or no concern, care, compassion, or consideration for the feelings, emotions, sentiments, or concerns of other people; inconsiderate or incompassionate.

adjective

  1. 1

    Expressing or feeling little or no concern, care, compassion, or consideration for the feelings, emotions, sentiments, or concerns of other people; inconsiderate or incompassionate.

  2. 2

    Not expressing normal physical feeling.

    It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact.

  3. 3

    Not expressing normal emotional feelings; cold; tactless; undiplomatic.

    1895, Grant Allen, The British Barbarians Somehow, when Bertram Ingledew let it once be felt he did not wish to be questioned on any particular point, even women managed to restrain their curiosity: and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further.

    Oh I really should have known by the time you drove me home, / By the vagueness in your eyes, your casual good-byes, / By the chill in your embrace and the expression on your face, / That told me you might have some advice to give / On how to be insensitive.

  4. 4

    Unreceptive, indifferent; displaying little openness or receptivity.

    This early rigidification and satisfaction with his own conclusions made him insensitive to new political and philosophical ideas.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in-bor. Middle English in- English in- English sensitive English insensitive From in- + sensitive.

Forms

comparative
more insensitive
superlative
most insensitive
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).