sensibility
/ˌsɛn(t)səˈbɪləti/ noun C1- Emotions or feelings arising from or relating to aesthetic or moral standards, especially those which are sensitive and thus likely to be hurt or offended. · I apologize if I offended your sensibilities, but that’s the truth of the matter.
- The ability to feel, perceive, or sense; responsiveness to sensory stimuli; sensitivity; also, the degree to which someone or something (especially a sensory organ or tissue) is able to respond to sensory stimuli.
- The quality of being easily affected by external forces or stimuli; also, of a measuring instrument: the quality of being able to detect small changes in the environment.
- Keen sensitivity to matters of creative expression or feeling; artistic or emotional awareness.
- The ability to perceive or sense as opposed to the ability to understand; also, in the philosophy of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): emotion or feeling as opposed to the will.
- Synonym of Empfindsamkeit.
Plural sensibilities
From the library
She felt that Jane’s feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner, not often united with great sensibility.
Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Elizabeth, by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Darcy’s opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected with that corps.
To save a man, to spare a father’s feelings, or a mother’s sensibility, is not to do a good action, but a simple deed of humanity.”
I possess a share of wit, and a certain relative sensibility, which enables me to draw from life in general, for the support of mine, all I meet with that is good, like the monkey who cracks the nut to get at its contents.
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