''insensate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260715204347-00-⌔

insensate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

insensate (comparative more insensate, superlative most insensate)

• Having no sensation or consciousness; unconscious; inanimate.
  • ✤ Synonyms: insensible, nonsentient, unaware
  • ✤ Antonym: sentient
  • ✤ 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.¹
  • ✤ 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; thoughtless.
  • ✤ Synonyms: mindless, unreasonable, unwise
  • ✤ […] the sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool, were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh;— […]³
  • ✤ 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.⁴
  • ✤ […] the romping girl teased her… and was always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some “fellow” or other.⁵
  • ✤ 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.⁶
• Unfeeling, heartless, cruel, insensitive.
  • ✤ Synonyms: callous, hardhearted, severe; see also Thesaurus: stern
  • ✤ I was cold-hearted, hard, insensate.⁷
  • ✤ That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point.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.⁹
• (medicine, physiology) Not responsive to sensory stimuli; unfeeling.
  • ✤ Synonyms: unreactive, unresponsive
  • ✤ If the ophthalmic branch is cut the patient must be told about the hazards of having an insensate cornea.¹⁰
  • ✤ 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.¹¹
  • ✤ 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.¹²

Noun

insensate (plural insensates)

• One who is insensate.
  • ✤ 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.¹³

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.
  • ✤ And this thought, blinding them to all else, insensating them to all emotions but that of vengeance, was thought of Josephine.¹⁴
  • ✤ The train moved on again, keeping us prisoners in a stench-filled car, starving, suffocating, insensated.¹⁵

Etymology 1

Learned borrowing from Latin īnsēnsātus.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɪnˈsɛn.sət/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Etymology 2

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

Etymology 3

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

Printed 2026-07-15.

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Footnotes

1. 1816, Lord Byron, Diodati: ↩

2. 1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Moriturus: ↩

3. 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: ↩

4. 1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 13, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC: ↩

5. 1913, Joseph Conrad, “ch. 6”, in Chance: ↩

6. 1918, Louis Joseph Vance, “ch. 12”, in The False Faces: ↩

7. 1847, Anne Brontë, “ch. 36”, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: ↩

8. 1904, Frank Norris, “ch. 6”, in A Man’s Woman: ↩

9. 1917, Frank L. Packard, “ch. 8”, in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale: ↩

10. 1958 June, Edward B. Schlesinger, “Trigeminal Neuralgia”, in American Journal of Nursing, volume 58, number 6, page 854: ↩

11. 2004 Aug. 1, Jeff G. van Baal, “Surgical Treatment of the Infected Diabetic Foot”, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, volume 39, page S126: ↩

12. 2005 Feb. 5, “Minerva”, in BMJ: British Medical Journal, volume 330, number 7486, page. 316: ↩

13. 1873, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 22”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes: ↩

14. 1915, James Oliver Curwood, “ch. 24”, in God’s Country And the Woman ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

15. 2002, Shony A. Braun, My Heart Is a Violin ‎${}^{[2]}$, →ISBN, page 60: ↩