insensate

comparative more insensate · superlative most insensate

1. Having no sensation or consciousness; unconscious; inanimate.

   If I might be Insensate matter With sensate me Sitting within, Harking and prying, I might begin To dicker with dying.

   1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Moriturus

   1 more example

   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.

   1816, Lord Byron, Diodati

   Synonyms: insensible, nonsentient, unaware, insensitive · Antonyms: sentient

2. Senseless; foolish; irrational; thoughtless.

   […]the sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool, were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh;—[…]

   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

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   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.

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

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

   1913, Joseph Conrad, “ch. 6”, in Chance

   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.

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

   Synonyms: mindless, unreasonable, unwise

3. Unfeeling, heartless, cruel, insensitive.

   I was cold-hearted, hard, insensate.

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

   2 more examples

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

   1904, Frank Norris, “ch. 6”, in A Man's Woman

   […]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.

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

   Synonyms: callous, hardhearted, severe, brutal, callous, cold, hardhanded, cold-eyed

4. medicineNot responsive to sensory stimuli; unfeeling.

   If the ophthalmic branch is cut the patient must be told about the hazards of having an insensate cornea.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

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

   Synonyms: unreactive, unresponsive

plural insensates

1. 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.

   1873, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 22”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes

present singular third person insensates · participle present insensating · participle past insensated · past insensated

1. rareTo render insensate; to deprive of sensation or consciousness.

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

   2002, Shony A. Braun, My Heart Is a Violin, →ISBN, page 60

   1 more example

   And this thought, blinding them to all else, insensating them to all emotions but that of vengeance, was thought of Josephine.

   1915, James Oliver Curwood, “ch. 24”, in God's Country And the Woman