Insensitive

How to spell insensitive

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce insensitive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does insensitive mean?

1. adjectiveShowing no awareness of or concern for other people's feelings, or unresponsive to a physical influence.

Insensitive in a sentence

• His insensitive comment about her weight ruined the dinner.

• The manager was criticised for being insensitive to the grieving employee.

Where does insensitive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from Latin roots and reaches modern English through a long route. At its core is the Latin verb sentire, which meant 'to feel, perceive, or be aware', the same root that gives us 'sense', 'sentiment', and 'sensation'. From this came the medieval Latin sensitivus, describing something capable of feeling or perceiving, which passed into English (often by way of French) by the late 1300s as 'sensitive'. The negative form was created in English by attaching the prefix in-, meaning 'not', so 'insensitive' literally describes someone or something lacking the capacity to feel or to register feeling. It entered written English in the 1600s and gradually broadened from a purely physical sense (a surface insensitive to heat) to the common modern moral sense (a remark that is insensitive to others' feelings). Remembering that the middle is the same 'sens' you see in 'sense' helps fix the spelling, since the second vowel is an unstressed -i- before the -tive ending.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• sens- (from Latin sentire: to feel)
• -itive (adjective suffix)