insentient

American  

[in-sen-shee-uhnt, -shuhnt] / ɪnˈsɛn ʃi ənt, -ʃənt /

adjective

1. not sentient; without sensation or feeling; inanimate.

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insentient British  

/ ɪnˈsɛnʃɪənt /

adjective

1. rare lacking consciousness or senses; inanimate

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Other Word Forms

• insentience noun
• insentiency noun

Etymology

Origin of insentient

First recorded in 1755–65; in- ³ + sentient

Example Sentences

“I began gradually to stir into another style of life, less theoretical and less optimistic, less vulnerable. I was ready for an insentient middle age,” he wrote in “The Savage God.”

From Seattle Times

It hung over the suspended waves of the hills, an insentient pivot without which the world would not exist.

From Literature

Is Mr. Gerson insentient that numerous other countries on the planet, some very oil-rich, can contribute to the feeding of foreign children?

From Washington Post

Still, it’s only in investigating precisely why Google is the last person you should ask – being a search engine therefore insentient – that you can start cobbling together an idea of what attractiveness really is.

From The Guardian

Thinking of animals as insentient automatons makes it easier to stomach breeding chickens so breast-heavy that they can’t stand up, or keeping social animals, such as orcas, isolated in tiny corrals.

From The New Yorker