English

Adjective

insensate ‎(comparative more insensate, superlative most insensate)

1. 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.

2. Senseless; foolish; irrational.
   • 1818, Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy, ch. 13:

     [T]he sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool, were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh.

   • 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times, ch. 13:

     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, Chance, ch. 6:

     [T]he romping girl teased her . . . and was always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or other.

   • 1918, Louis Joseph Vance, The False Faces, ch. 12:

     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.

3. Unfeeling, heartless, cruel, insensitive.
   • 1847, Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,ch. 36:

     I was cold-hearted, hard, insensate.

   • 1904, Frank Norris, A Man's Woman, ch. 6:

     That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point.

   • 1917, Frank L. Packard, The Adventures of Jimmie Dale, ch. 8:

     . . . 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.

4. (medicine, physiology) Not responsive to sensory stimuli.
   • 1958 June, Edward B. Schlesinger, "Trigeminal Neuralgia," American Journal of Nursing, vol. 58, no. 6, p. 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," Clinical Infectious Diseases, vol. 39, p. 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," BMJ: British Medical Journal, vol. 330, no. 7486, p. 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

• (having no sensation or consciousness): sentient

Translations

Noun

insensate ‎(plural insensates)

1. One who is insensate.
   • 1873, Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, ch. 22:

     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.

Verb

insensate ‎(third-person singular simple present insensates, present participle insensating, simple past and past participle insensated)

1. (rare) To render insensate; to deprive of sensation or consciousness.
   • 1915, James Oliver Curwood, God's Country And the Woman, ch. 24 (Google preview):

     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 9780759696150, p. 60 (Google preview):

     The train moved on again, keeping us prisoners in a stench-filled car, starving, suffocating, insensated.

References

• J[ohn] A. Simpson and E[dward] S. C. Weiner, editors (1989) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8.

Anagrams

• antisense

Italian

Adjective

insensate f pl

1. feminine plural of insensato

Anagrams

• annessite

Latin

Adjective

īnsensāte

1. vocative masculine singular of īnsensātus