insentient
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of insentient
Explanation
Being insentient means having no ability to feel or understand. There's no need to apologize to an insentient chair leg when you accidentally kick it. Insentient is the opposite of sentient, or "capable of feeling," which comes from the Latin sentire, "to feel." If something's insentient, it has no senses and can't feel physical or emotional pain or pleasure. People once commonly believed that animals fell into this category, but today most agree that animals are conscious, feeling beings rather than insentient objects. You probably think of trees as insentient, but some scientists suspect that even plants might have sensory abilities!
Vocabulary lists containing insentient
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“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 ● Sep. 24, 2019
There, with the ability to talk to the unresponsive living, his nerves "insentient now as string," he longs even for the pain of Hell.
From Time Magazine Archive
It hung over the suspended waves of the hills, an insentient pivot without which the world would not exist.
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
Their legs have become idle, almost insentient twigs.
From Fantasia of the Unconscious by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
"Better they should burn the insentient books than the men who preach the living Word!" spoke Anthony, suddenly putting out his hands and clasping hers.
From For the Faith by Evelyn Everett-Green
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
