different between insensible vs unsusceptible

English

Etymology

From Old French insensible, from Late Latin ?ns?nsibilis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?s?n.s?.bl?/
• Hyphenation: in?sen?si?ble

Adjective

insensible (comparative more insensible, superlative most insensible)

1. Unable to be perceived by the senses.
   • They fall away, / And languish with insensible decay.

2. Incapable or deprived of physical sensation.
3. Unable to be understood; unintelligible.
4. Not sensible or reasonable; meaningless.
   • 1736, Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum Coronæ

     If it make the indictment be insensible or uncertain, […] it shall be quashed.

5. Incapable of mental feeling; indifferent.

   • Lost in their loves, insensible of shame.

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Modern Library Edition (1995), page 138

     In spite of her deep-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man's affection...

6. Incapable of emotional feeling; callous; apathetic.

   Synonym: insensitive

Antonyms

• sensible

Derived terms

• insensibility
• insensibly

Translations

French

Etymology

From Old French insensible, from Late Latin ?ns?nsibilis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??.s??.sibl/
• Homophone: insensibles

Adjective

insensible (plural insensibles)

1. insensible
2. impervious

Further reading

• “insensible” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Spanish

Etymology

From Late Latin ?ns?nsibilis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /insen?sible/, [?n.s?n?si.??le]

Adjective

insensible (plural insensibles)

1. insensible, insensitive, callous, cold, tactless

   Antonym: sensible

Related terms

• insensibilidad (possibly derived)

Further reading

• “insensible” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.

English

Etymology

un- +? susceptible

Adjective

unsusceptible (comparative more unsusceptible, superlative most unsusceptible)

1. Not susceptible.
   • 1751, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 28 May, 1751, in Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt (eds.) Samuel Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 202,^[1]

     Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations, and impatient of restraint, has always endeavored to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the enclosures of regularity.

   • 1817, William Wordsworth, “Vernal Ode,” Stanza III,^[2]

     Mortals, rejoice! the very Angels quit

     Their mansions unsusceptible of change,

     Amid your pleasant bowers to sit,

     And through your sweet vicissitudes to range!

   • 1818, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Chapter ,^[3]

     It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet.

   • 1873, John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, Chapter 5,^[4]

     I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first “conviction of sin.”

   • 1994, José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, University of Chicago Press, Chapter 2, p. 40,^[5]

     Of all social phenomena none is perhaps as protean and, consequently, as unsusceptible to binary classification as religion.

   Synonym: insusceptible