Sensibility

How to spell sensibility

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce sensibility

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sensibility mean?

1. nounA refined capacity to feel and respond to emotional or aesthetic impressions.
2. nounA tendency to be hurt or offended, especially regarding matters of taste or propriety.

Sensibility in a sentence

• The poem appealed to her artistic sensibility.

• The joke offended the sensibility of several guests.

• He wrote with a quiet sensibility that readers found moving.

• The editor toned down the article to avoid bruising public sensibility.

Where does sensibility come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin sensibilitas, a noun built on sensibilis meaning 'able to be perceived or felt', which in turn grew from sensus 'feeling, sense' and the verb sentire 'to feel or perceive'. English took it up in the late 1300s by way of Old French sensibilite, at first carrying the medical and physical sense of the capacity to receive sensation. Over the following centuries the meaning shifted inward, coming to describe a person's fine emotional and moral responsiveness, a use made famous by Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. The same sentire root sits inside a whole family of relatives such as sentiment, sensitive, consent and resent. Remembering that the heart of the word is the Latin sens for 'feel' helps explain why it is spelled with an s and ends in -ibility rather than -ability.

How the word is built

• sens- (feel, perceive, from Latin sentire)
• -ibil- (able to be)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix)