insensitive
When you're insensitive, you're not feeling something. You can be insensitive to the weather or other people's problems.
This word has two meanings that are closely related. When your foot is asleep, it's insensitive or numb — you can't feel your friend poking at it. When you get really cold, you can become insensitive to pain. In the other sense, insensitive means the opposite of caring and sympathetic — you're insensitive to other people's feelings. If you make a joke about your friend's bad haircut when you know she's embarrassed about it, you're being insensitive.
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deficient in human sensibility; not mentally or morally sensitive“insensitive to the needs of the patients”
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Synonyms:
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hard
dispassionate
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unresponsive
not responding to some influence or stimulus
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insensible
incapable of physical sensation
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callous, indurate, pachydermatous
emotionally hardened
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dead, numb
(followed by `to') not showing human feeling or sensitivity; unresponsive
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dull
blunted in responsiveness or sensibility
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insensible, unaffected
unaware of or indifferent to
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soulless
lacking sensitivity or the capacity for deep feeling
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thick-skinned, tough-skinned
insensitive to criticism
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tough
not given to gentleness or sentimentality
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Antonyms:
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sensitive
being susceptible to the attitudes, feelings, or circumstances of others
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responsive
readily reacting or replying to people or events or stimuli; showing emotion
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alive
(followed by `to' or `of') aware of
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feisty, huffy, thin-skinned, touchy
quick to take offense
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oversensitive
unduly sensitive or thin-skinned
- show more antonyms...
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hard
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not responsive to physical stimuli“insensitive to radiation”
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Synonyms:
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unresponsive
not responding to some influence or stimulus
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insensible
incapable of physical sensation
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dead, deadened
devoid of physical sensation; numb
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unreactive
not tending to react to stimulation
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insusceptible, unsusceptible
not susceptible to
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Antonyms:
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sensitive
responsive to physical stimuli
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responsive
readily reacting or replying to people or events or stimuli; showing emotion
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sensible, sensitive
able to feel or perceive
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delicate
of an instrument or device; capable of registering minute differences or changes precisely
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erogenous
sensitive to sexual stimulation
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excitable, irritable
capable of responding to stimuli
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highly sensitive
readily affected by various agents
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irritable
abnormally sensitive to a stimulus
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light-sensitive, photosensitive
sensitive to visible light
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radiosensitive
sensitive to radiation
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nociceptive
caused by or in response to pain
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reactive, responsive
reacting to a stimulus
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susceptible
(often followed by `of' or `to') yielding readily to or capable of
- show more antonyms...
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unresponsive
Vocabulary lists containing insensitive
After a thirteen-year-old football player ends up in a coma, his family and medical team try to piece together what happened.
A cross-country move, questions about her adoption and origins, and an incident of racism at school all have Makeda wondering where she belongs. Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part I, Part II, Part III
In this prequel to Walk Two Moons, thirteen-year-old Mary Lou Finney documents an eventful summer.
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