Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The ability to feel or perceive.
- n. Keen intellectual perception: the sensibility of a painter to color.
- n. Mental or emotional responsiveness toward something, such as the feelings of another.
- n. Receptiveness to impression, whether pleasant or unpleasant; acuteness of feeling. Often used in the plural: "The sufferings of the Cuban people shocked our sensibilities” ( George F. Kennan).
- n. Refined awareness and appreciation in matters of feeling.
- n. The quality of being affected by changes in the environment.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The state or property of being sensible or capable of sensation; capability of sensation.
- n. Mental receptivity or susceptibility in general.
- n. Specifically, the capacity of exercising or being the subject of emotion or feeling in a restricted sense; capacity for the higher or more refined feelings.
- n. In a still narrower sense, peculiar susceptibility of impression, pleasurable or painful; unusual delicacy or keenness of feeling; quick emotion or sympathy; sensitiveness: in this sense used frequently in the plural.
- n. The property, as in an instrument, of responding quickly to very slight changes of condition; delicacy; sensitiveness (the better word in this use).
- n. Sensation.
- n. Feeling; appreciation; sense; realization.
- n. Synonyms and Taste, Sensibility. See taste.
Wiktionary
- n. The ability to sense, feel or perceive; especially to be sensitive to the feelings of another
- n. An acute awareness or feeling
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Physiol.) The quality or state of being sensible, or capable of sensation; capacity to feel or perceive.
- n. The capacity of emotion or feeling, as distinguished from the intellect and the will; peculiar susceptibility of impression, pleasurable or painful; delicacy of feeling; quick emotion or sympathy; ; -- often used in the plural.
- n. Experience of sensation; actual feeling.
- n. That quality of an instrument which makes it indicate very slight changes of condition; delicacy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (physiology) responsiveness to external stimuli; the faculty of sensation
- n. refined sensitivity to pleasurable or painful impressions
- n. mental responsiveness and awareness
Examples
“These ocular spectra are of four kinds: 1st, Such as are owing to a less sensibility of a defined part of the retina; or _spectra from defect of sensibility. _ 2d, Such as are owing to a greater sensibility of a defined part of the retina; or _spectra from excess of sensibility_. 3d, Such as resemble their object in its colour as well as form; which may be termed”
“To qualify the term sensibility with any adjective inevitably means losing the denotation that sensible things can be the road to meaning.”
“We apply the term sensibility to the receptivity of the mind for impressions, in so far as it is in some way affected; and, on the other hand, we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, or the spontaneity of cognition, understanding.”
“And while Gary Groth may not be the cuddliest messenger in the world (on this or any other subject), one can rest assured that his sensibility is as curatorial as it [...]”
“But if his sensibility is adolescent, it is in the best sense: his anarchic entertainments exist somewhere between Alfred Jarry and Terry and the Pirates.”
“I ask you, how do you expect a woman to keep up what you call her sensibility when this sort of thing has happened to her about three times a week ever since she was seventeen?”
“The constant form of this receptivity, which we call sensibility, is a necessary condition of all relations in which objects can be intuited as existing without us, and when abstraction of these objects is made, is a pure intuition, to which we give the name of space.”
“There may be an increasingly shared "sensibility" among "global" writers, but finally the way in which that sensibility is embodied in the available resources of the writer's medium -- the particular language in which he/she writes -- can't simply be ignored.”
“To my mind, it just feels like those literary bigwigs who had one or two SF novels amongst their output, but who somehow escape being frowned upon as mere SF writers, aren’t really that different in sensibility from a hell of a lot of, say, New Wave writers who had or have one or two non-SF novels in their output.”
“Google argues they drive traffic to sites, but the whole Google sensibility is inimical to traditional brand loyalty.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sensibility’.
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Words related to knowledge
Words that relate to learning, knowing, being enlightened...
revelation, eureka, awakening, idea, sapient, astute, canny, intelligent, wise, sharp, shrewd, informed and 467 more...
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Keywords, by Raymond Williams
From a book about life and death.
aesthetic, alienation, art, behaviour, bourgeois, bureaucracy, capitalism, career, charity, city, civilization, class and 99 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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That's right, another list
muck-a-muck, ipse dixit, solipsism, anticlinal, analogical, amoral, alogical, synclinal, disinclined, iconological, studly, flitch and 179 more...
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Rilakkuma's list
The Velvetine Ruffians
gamine, waif, ruffian, villain, rake, libertine, velvetine, luminary, nom de plume, street urchin, epicurean, eventide and 256 more...
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-ibility, -ible, -ibly
capable of
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the favourites
These are words that I like; either because they sound amazing, mean pretty things, seem particularly suited to their assigned definition, or just have good mouthfeel. The best ones embody some com...
tatterdemalion, alpenglow, dapple, defenestrate, wacky, lissom, lithe, whisper, madcap, magniloquent, whimsy, sallow and 208 more...
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mouserie's list
Words that I find are amazing
vicissitude, mouse, indubitably, epistolary, awesome, tipperary, shadow, grimoire, hippopotomonstros..., novel, satire, confessional and 91 more...
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18th century british
from Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal ...
intimacy, piety, partiality, sentimental, plasters, mawkish, drab, spurious, sententious, bitters, folly, virtue and 132 more...
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tongue tippers
the ones that are just on the tip of the tongue, the ones that should be made celebrated members of my vocabulary, thank you
natant, prurient, antipodal, puerile, equipoise, choler, sui generis, exemplary, lodestar, rhetoric, bon mot, adjudicate and 91 more...
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an arch manner
delightful Janeisms and Regency terms; the vocabulary of the business of captivation
archly, captivating, chaise-and-four, empire waist, pianoforte, barouche-landeau, curricle, greatcoat, connexions, elegant, accomplished, sensibility and 12 more...
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QueenMab07's Words
virago, indigo, corporeal, ravenclaw, queen, water, voyager, wherefore, whereas, forsooth, indeed, chocolate and 73 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sensibility.
brtom Madam, it is impossible for me to suspect a man of Mr. Snake’s sensibility and discernment.
Sheridan, School for Scandal Jan 5, 2008