Search the Dictionary

Want of tenderness or susceptibility of emotion or passion; dullness; stupidity.

Not susceptible of emotion or passion; void of feeling; apathetic; unconcerned; indifferent; as, insensible to danger, fear, love, etc.; -- often used with of or to. Accept an obligation without being a slave to the giver, or insensible to his kindness. Sir H. Wotton. Lost in their loves, insensible of shame. Dryden.…

besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment. Locke. Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts. Dryden.

excess in any kind of action or indulgence; any immoderate indulgence of the appetites or passions. God is in every creature; be cruel toward none, neither abuse any by intemperance. Jer. Taylor. Some, as thou sawest, by violent stroke shall die, By fire, flood, famine, by intemperance more In meats and drinks. Milton.…

Indulging any appetite or passion to excess; immoderate to enjoyments or exertion.

The state of being intemperate; excessive indulgence of any appetite or passion; as, intemperateness in eating or drinking.

b) Keen; biting; as, intense cold. (c) Vehement; earnest; exceedingly strong; as, intense passion or hate. (d) Very severe; violent; as, intense pain or anguish. (e) Deep; strong; brilliant; as, intense color or light. In this intense seclusion of the forest. Hawthorne.

ng intense; intenseness; extreme degree; as, intensity of heat, cold, mental application, passion, etc. If you would deepen the intensity of light, you must be content to bring into deeper blackness and more distinct and definite outline the shade that accompanies it. F. W. Robertson.

To engage the attention of; to awaken interest in; to excite emotion or passion in, in behalf of a person or thing; as, the subject did not interest him; to interest one in charitable work. To love our native country . . . to be interested in its concerns is natural to all men. Dryden. A goddess who used to interest he…

Having the attention engaged; having emotion or passion excited; as, an interested listener.

Irascible; passionate. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Very susceptible of anger or passion; easily inflamed or exasperated; as, an irritable temper. Vicious, old, and irritable. Tennyson.

imulation, usually of an undue and uncomfortable kind; especially, excitement of anger or passion; provocation; annoyance; anger. The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect. De Quincey.

Ischial. [R.] Ischiadic passion or disease (Med.), a rheumatic or neuralgic affection of some part about the hip joint; -- called also sciatica.

The Wandering Jew, an imaginary personage, who, for his cruelty to the Savior during his passion, is doomed to wander on the earth till Christ's second coming.

The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; pleasurable feelings or emotions caused by success, good fortune, and the like, or by a rational prospect of possessing what we love or desire; gladness; exhilaration of spirits; delight. Her heavenly form beheld, all wished her joy. Dryden. Glid…

Fig.: To inflame, as the passions; to rouse; to provoke; to excite to action; to heat; to fire; to animate; to incite; as, to kindle anger or wrath; to kindle the flame of love, or love into a flame. So is a contentious man to kindle strife. Prov. xxvi. 21. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither. Shak. Kindl…

The of causing to burn, or of exciting or inflaming the passions.

pline was lax. Macaulay. Society at that epoch was lenient, if not lax, in matters of the passions. J. A. Symonds. The word "æternus" itself is sometimes of a lax signification. Jortin.

That which softens or mitigates; that which tends to allay passion, excitement, or pain; a palliative. There is one sweet Lenitive at least for evils, which Nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep. Sterne.