insensate

Learned borrowing from Latin īnsēnsātus.

• IPA^(key): /ɪnˈsɛn.sət/

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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.
   • 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.

3. 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.

4. (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.

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

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

insensate (plural insensates)

1. 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.

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

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, “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.

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

• antisense

insensate f pl

1. feminine plural of insensato

insensate f pl

1. plural of insensata

• annessite, estensina

īnsēnsāte

1. vocative masculine singular of īnsēnsātus