insensitive
adjective
Simple meaning
Expressing or feeling little or no concern, care, compassion, or consideration for the feelings, emotions, sentiments, or concerns of other people.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihnsehnsuhtivSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪnˈsɛnsətɪv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Expressing or feeling little or no concern, care, compassion, or consideration for the feelings, emotions, sentiments, or concerns of other people; inconsiderate or incompassionate.
Not expressing normal emotional feelings; cold; tactless; undiplomatic.
Not expressing normal physical feeling.
Not responsive to physical stimuli
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Expressing or feeling little or no concern, care, compassion, or consideration for the feelings, emotions, sentiments, or concerns of other people; inconsiderate or incompassionate.
Used this way, insensitive is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It carries warmth, so it reads as personal rather than detached.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Kind and considerate
- Usage feel
- Warm and expressive
Nearby words
- dead , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use insensitive
- “Insensitive to the needs of the patients.”adjective
- “Insensitive to radiation.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.