susceptibility
Americannoun
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susceptibilities
plural
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state or character of being susceptible.
susceptibility to disease.
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capacity for receiving mental or moral impressions; tendency to be emotionally affected.
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susceptibilities, capacities for emotion; feelings.
His susceptibilities are easily wounded.
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Electricity.
noun
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the quality or condition of being susceptible
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the ability or tendency to be impressed by emotional feelings; sensitivity
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(plural) emotional sensibilities; feelings
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physics
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Also called: electric susceptibility. Χ. (of a dielectric) the amount by which the relative permittivity differs from unity
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Κ. Also called: magnetic susceptibility. (of a magnetic medium) the amount by which the relative permeability differs from unity
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Synonym Usage
See sensibility.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of susceptibility
First recorded in 1635–45; from Medieval Latin susceptibilitās, equivalent to susceptibilis(is) susceptible + -itās- -ity
Explanation
Susceptibility is a tendency to be affected by something. Some people have a greater susceptibility to colds than others. A susceptibility is a type of weakness, but a particular kind. If your knee keeps getting injured, you may have a susceptibility to knee problems. If alcoholism runs in your family, you probably have a susceptibility to being an alcoholic yourself. Some people have a susceptibility to spending a lot of money or eating too much. When you have a susceptibility, there's something you can't resist or can't fight off.
Vocabulary lists containing susceptibility
This Week in Words: April 7- 13, 2018
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The Awakening
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"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," Vocabulary from the political argument
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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.
See Examples For:
Even so, these genetic differences appear to establish a distinct biological starting point that could affect a person's susceptibility to disease.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 20, 2026
The temperamental little, yellow fruit with its susceptibility to heavy rain and viruses can be tough to grow, while devastating hurricanes in Jamaica, a prime producer of Scotch bonnets, delivered a further blow.
From BBC ● May 31, 2026
Pandemics happen with regularity due to little things like the susceptibility of the human body to illness and international trade and travel.
From Salon ● May 11, 2026
Thermo Fisher on Monday said the microbiology business, which provides antimicrobial susceptibility testing and culture media solutions for clinical, pharmaceutical and food-safety testing, generated $645 million in revenue last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026
In 2004 two U.S. anthropologists and a Venezuelan medical researcher proposed that Native American susceptibility to infectious disease might have a second cause: helper-T cells, which like HLAs help the immune system recognize foreign objects.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
He is one of the 90% of people with so-called idiopathic disease: Their Parkinson’s has no clear genetic cause but almost certainly results from some combination of ill-defined genetic susceptibilities and environmental triggers.
From Science Magazine ● May 4, 2023
Social media, he says, exacerbate some dangerous susceptibilities — to demagoguery and moral vanity — that are neither new nor entirely expungable.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 31, 2021
Jeff Bardin, the chief intelligence officer at cybersecurity firm Treadstone 71, told Fox News that almost immediately after Soleimani's death, Iranian hackers began infiltrating U.S. city websites, searching for susceptibilities.
From Fox News ● Jan. 3, 2020
But the same ecosystem of susceptibilities that heightens the risk of violent death at 17 just transfers that risk inside our adult bodies.
From New York Times ● Sep. 28, 2019
We refused this offer nominally in view of Belgian susceptibilities.
From My Mission to London 1912-1914 by Karl Max, Fürst von Lichnowsky
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.
