sensibility

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: sen=si=bil=i=ty

CIDE DICTIONARY

sensibility, n. [Cf. F. sensibilité, LL. sensibilitas.].

•  The quality or state of being sensible, or capable of sensation; capacity to feel or perceive.  [1913 Webster]
•  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; as, sensibility to pleasure or pain; sensibility to shame or praise; exquisite sensibility; -- often used in the plural.  Cowper.  [1913 Webster]

  "The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility."  [1913 Webster]

  "His sensibilities seem rather to have been those of patriotism than of wounded pride."  [1913 Webster]
•  Experience of sensation; actual feeling.  [1913 Webster]

  "This adds greatly to my sensibility."  [1913 Webster]
•  That quality of an instrument which makes it indicate very slight changes of condition; delicacy; as, the sensibility of a balance, or of a thermometer.  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Taste; susceptibility; feeling. See Taste.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

sensibility, n. (pl. -ies)
1 capacity to feel (little finger lost its sensibility).
2 a openness to emotional impressions, susceptibility, sensitiveness (sensibility to kindness). b an exceptional or excessive degree of this (sense and sensibility).
3 (in pl.) a tendency to feel offended etc.

Etymology

ME f. LL sensibilitas (as SENSIBLE)

THESAURUS

sensibility

acuity, acumen, acuteness, adaptability, affectibility, affection, affectivity, agreeability, amenability, apperception, appreciation, appreciation of differences, appreciativeness, artistic judgment, astuteness, awareness, bendability, cogency, cognition, cognizance, connoisseurship, consciousness, critical niceness, criticalness, delicacy, discernment, discriminating taste, discriminatingness, discrimination, discriminativeness, ductibility, ductility, elasticity, emotion, emotions, extendibility, extensibility, facility, farseeingness, farsightedness, fastidiousness, feel, feeling, feelings, fictility, fine palate, finesse, flexibility, flexility, flexuousness, foresight, foresightedness, formativeness, give, heart, impressibility, impressionability, incisiveness, insight, judiciousness, keenness, limberness, limen, litheness, longheadedness, longsightedness, making distinctions, malleability, mindfulness, moldability, niceness of distinction, nicety, noesis, note, notice, openness to sensation, palate, penetration, perceptibility, perception, perceptiveness, percipience, perspicaciousness, perspicacity, perspicuity, perspicuousness, physical sensibility, plasticity, pliability, pliancy, providence, readiness of feeling, realization, receptiveness, receptivity, recognition, refined discrimination, refined palate, refinement, responsiveness, sagaciousness, sagacity, selectiveness, sensation level, sense, sensibilities, sensibleness, sensitiveness, sensitivity, sentience, sentiency, sentiments, sequacity, springiness, submissiveness, subtlety, suppleness, susceptibility, susceptivity, tact, tactfulness, taste, tensileness, tensility, threshold of sensation, tractability, tractility, trenchancy, willowiness

ROGET THESAURUS

sensibility

Sensibility

N sensibility, sensibleness, sensitiveness, moral sensibility, impressibility, affectibility, susceptibleness, susceptibility, susceptivity, mobility, vivacity, vivaciousness, tenderness, softness, sentimental, sentimentality, sentimentalism, excitability, fastidiousness, physical sensibility, sore point, sore place, where the shoe pinches, sensible, sensitive, impressible, impressionable, susceptive, susceptible, alive to, impassionable, gushing, warm hearted, tender hearted, soft hearted, tender as a chicken, soft, sentimental, romantic, enthusiastic, highflying, spirited, mettlesome, vivacious, lively, expressive, mobile, tremblingly alive, excitable, oversensitive, without skin, thin-skinned, fastidious, sensibly, to the quick, to the inmost core, mens aequa in arduis, pour salt in the wound.

Physical Sensibility

N physical sensibility, sensibility, sensitiveness, physical sensibility, feeling, impressibility, perceptivity, aesthetics, moral sensibility, sensation, impression, consciousness, external senses, sensible, sensitive, sensuous, aesthetic, perceptive, sentient, conscious, acute, sharp, keen, vivid, lively, impressive, thin-skinned, to the quick, the touch'd needle trembles to the pole.