Sensibility, n.; pl. Sensibilities.
Etymology: [Cf. F. sensibilité, LL. sensibilitas.]
1. (Physiol.)
The quality or state of being sensible, or capable of sensation; capacity to feel or perceive.
2. 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. "Sensibilities so fine!" Cowper. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. Burke. His sensibilities seem rather to have been those of patriotism than of wounded pride. Marshall.
3. Experience of sensation; actual feeling. This adds greatly to my sensibility. Burke.
2 more senses
4. 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.
Syn. -- Taste; susceptibility; feeling. See Taste.
Shades of meaning
Sensibility in the philosophical sense, denotes the capacity of emotion or feeling, as distinguished from the intellect and the will. (Compare synonyms for sensation.) In popular use sensibility denotes sometimes capacity of feeling of any kind; as, sensibility to heat or cold; sometimes, a peculiar readiness to be the subject of feeling, especially of the higher feelings; as, the sensibility of the artist or the poet; a person of great or fine sensibility. Sensitiveness denotes an especial delicacy of sensibility, ready to be excited by the slightest cause, as displayed, for instance, in the "sensitive-plant." Susceptibility is rather a capacity to take up, receive, and, as it were, to contain feeling, so that a person of great susceptibility is capable of being not only readily but deeply moved; sensitiveness is more superficial, susceptibility more pervading. Thus, in physics, the sensitiveness of a magnetic needle is the ease with which it may be deflected, as by another magnet; its susceptibility is the degree to which it can be magnetized by a given magnetic force or the amount of magnetism it will hold. So a person of great sensitiveness is quickly and keenly affected by any external influence, as by music, pathos, or ridicule, while a person of great susceptibility is not only touched, but moved to his inmost soul.
Prepositions
The sensibility of the organism to atmospheric changes.