sensitive

Pluralsensitives

1. 1
   adjective

   Easily offended, upset, or hurt, especially by criticism or remarks taken personally.

   He's sensitive about his weight, so choose your words carefully.

   After the divorce, she was sensitive to any mention of her ex-husband.

   Similartouchy, thin-skinned, self-conscious, defensive, prickly

   Oppositethick-skinned, insensitive

   Note

   Here the feelings at risk are the person's own: someone sensitive in this way is easily wounded. The same phrase, a sensitive person, can also mean the reverse, attentive to others' feelings, and only context tells you which. "Max is very sensitive; he cried today" leaves no doubt. "A sensitive colleague" could be praise or a warning, so add a clue when the difference matters.

2. 2
   adjective

   Meant to be concealed or kept secret rather than openly shared.

   The leaked files contained sensitive financial data about thousands of customers.

   Employees must store sensitive documents in locked cabinets overnight.

   Similarconfidential, classified, secret, private, restricted

   Oppositepublic, unclassified

   Note

   The language of security and diplomacy, where sensitive is a quieter word than secret. It most often attaches to documents, data and information, and it intensifies readily: highly sensitive documents. A diplomat in BioWare's Mass Effect (2007) declines to say more because the matter is "too sensitive." Saying so admits that something exists while refusing to describe it.

3. 3
   adjective

   Aware of the feelings of others and careful not to offend or upset them.

   He was sensitive to the family's grief and chose his words carefully.

   Her sensitive handling of the layoffs earned her the staff's respect.

   Similartactful, considerate, thoughtful, sympathetic, understanding

   Oppositeinsensitive, tactless, thoughtless, callous

4. 4
   adjective

   Accurate; able to register even small changes in the property being measured.

   Seismographs are sensitive enough to record tremors on the far side of the planet.

   The new test is sensitive to even trace amounts of the virus.

   Similarprecise, accurate, responsive, acute

   Oppositeinsensitive, crude, imprecise

   Note

   The instrument-maker's sense, used of gauges, tests and detectors. Everyday speech treats a sensitive instrument as an accurate one, but measurement keeps the two apart. Sensitivity is how much the output changes for a given change in input. Accuracy is how close a reading comes to the true value. A scale can respond to the faintest touch and still read wrong.

5. 5
   adjective

   Capable of offending, upsetting, or hurting the people who hear or discuss it.

   Immigration remains a sensitive issue that candidates approach with caution.

   The documentary deals with sensitive material, including footage of the disaster's victims.

   Similardelicate, controversial, touchy, thorny, difficult

   Oppositeuncontroversial, innocuous

   Note

   The adjective moves from the person to the subject. A sensitive topic, issue or question is one that may hurt or offend when it is raised, as religion can in dealings with foreign business associates. It is close to the "delicate, intricate" meaning, but the risk here is offense rather than mishandling. It is also milder than taboo: a sensitive subject can be raised with care, while a taboo one is not raised at all.

6. 6
   adjective

   Important and intricate, requiring great delicacy in how it is handled.

   Negotiations have reached a sensitive stage where any leak could derail the agreement.

   Repairing the manuscript was sensitive work that demanded steady hands and patience.

   Similardelicate, tricky, critical, ticklish, difficult

   Oppositestraightforward, routine

7. 7
   adjective

   Responsive to stimuli; reacting readily to influences such as light, touch, or temperature.

   Fingertips are packed with nerve endings, making them sensitive to the lightest touch.

   Photographic film is sensitive to light and must be loaded in total darkness.

   Similarresponsive, reactive, susceptible

   Oppositeinsensitive, unresponsive, resistant

   Note

   The construction to watch is sensitive to, naming what something reacts to. It applies to machines as readily as to bodies. O. S. Nock, writing in the Railway Magazine in 1947, found an engine "a little sensitive to wet rails" and called the same trait "touchiness" in other locomotives. The borrowing from human temperament is deliberate, and it shows how close this sense sits to the emotional ones.

8. 8
   adjective

   Capable of sensory perception, or connected with the senses.

   Early naturalists separated plants from sensitive creatures capable of feeling their surroundings.

   Even simple sensitive organisms pull away from things that harm them.

   Similarsentient

   Oppositeinsentient, insensate

   Note

   The oldest layer of the word, carried from Middle French sensitif and Medieval Latin sensitivus: the bare power of feeling, not any delicacy of temperament. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy sets "the sensitive faculty" against reason. That pairing is the key to reading older texts: sensitive here means what senses, as opposed to what thinks, and it names a capacity rather than a personality.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A person with a paranormal sensitivity to presences or forces that most people cannot perceive.

   The investigators brought a sensitive to the manor to see whether she could feel anything unusual.

   Local sensitives claimed the battlefield still echoed with the soldiers' fear.

   Similarpsychic, medium, clairvoyant

   Note

   The adjective has become a noun for a person here: a sensitive, the sensitives, with an ordinary plural. It belongs to the vocabulary of spiritualism and psychical research, where Rollo Ahmed in 1936 set it beside "mediumistic" as a term of his own day. Its roots lie in the mesmerist's adjective. The article is the tell: "she is a sensitive" names a claimed gift, while "she is sensitive" means something else entirely.

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