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as in unconscious
having lost consciousness if a choking person is insensible, you should lay them down on their back before performing the Heimlich maneuver

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as in insensate
lacking animate awareness or sensation even the canyon's insensible rocks seemed to mock the stranded climber's utter helplessness

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of insensible Para añadir más ofensas, YouTube TV decidió tomar esta medida durante el Mes de la Herencia Hispana, un acto profundamente insensible y ofensivo. Todd Spangler, Variety, 1 Oct. 2025 Also invited, for insensible reasons, is Neville’s first wife, Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland), blond to Kay’s brunette, for easy identification. Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr. 2025 The ‘real’ Camille, meanwhile, has become an insensible, comatose carcass, although no one seems to notice. Damon Wise, Deadline, 24 Jan. 2025 Foreman tumbled downward in a dizzy, slow-motion-like crash, full-weight, a helpless giant, insensible. Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, 17 Jan. 2025 Or lobbyists can sometimes intervene and gain insensible exemptions from bans. IEEE Spectrum, 10 Feb. 2024 The novel positions him as insensible to agendas, hopelessly subject to the whims of the altruistic and the cruel. Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for insensible
Adjective
  • Naroditsky, a child prodigy who became one of the most influential American voices in the sport, was found this week unconscious on a sofa by his friends grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk and Peter Giannatos, founder of the Charlotte Chess Center.
    Jake Lubbehusen, NBC news, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Those few villagers who miraculously lived were rendered unconscious.
    Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 22 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • The correlation seemed to suggest that space was alive with invisible forces that bound together the variable environments of the Sun and Earth.
    Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 27 Oct. 2025
  • To make sense out of this tangle of connections and contingencies, many macroscopes employ computational models to reveal the key economic, medical, political, educational, or ecological relationships that are often invisible to all but the experts.
    Big Think, Big Think, 27 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Meanwhile, a debonair and nonchalant judge, Roland Brack (Nicholas Pinnock), who has arranged George’s loan for the expensive property, is also dallying with Hedda and plots to use his influence—his power, rather—to tighten their extramarital bond.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2025
  • Accompanied by a nonchalant guitar performance, dancer and choreographer Dong Jilan, donning a brown velvet dress and having the same long, wavy hair as Sanmao, woke up from a miniature dune and roamed around the set in a highly spiritual and ceremonial fashion.
    Denni Hu, Footwear News, 17 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • The brain, like other internal organs, is insensate, its lack of sensory receptors attested by videos of virtuoso violinists who play on unfazed as neurosurgeons go to work inside their skulls.
    Matthew Ponsford, WIRED, 19 Sep. 2024
  • But states have used midazolam alone — and at much higher doses — in executions since 2013, claiming the drug will render people insensate to pain before the administration of other lethal injection drugs.
    Lauren Gill, ProPublica, 29 Apr. 2023
Adjective
  • The president has been targeting Jeffries online with offensive and vulgar memes since the pair first had an unsuccessful sit-down meeting in the Oval Office just before the shutdown.
    Zachary Schermele, USA Today, 9 Oct. 2025
  • One room cracked up at a vulgar joke about a woman’s behind, while another went for an outrageous and surreal midfilm montage — but each bit was made genuinely funnier by the dozens of people gasping and wheezing over it.
    Robert Rubsam, New York Times, 1 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • But there are also Black folks who are ignorant of this.
    Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 21 Oct. 2025
  • The pilot has moments both sweet and funny, and sets up the possibility of romance amongst the characters, as well as further high jinks from a rotating cast of license seekers and citizens ignorant of the requirements for a Real ID.
    Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 11 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Caplan-Auerbach is studying nearly imperceptible seismic tremors that have preceded major landslides, including the August one in Tracy Arm.
    Ella Nilsen, CNN Money, 22 Oct. 2025
  • For most folks watching at home, the change was imperceptible.
    Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 20 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • What began as a casual idea—something fun to fill the week after the course’s annual aerification—quickly evolved into a full-scale charitable event.
    News Release, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Oct. 2025
  • Turn casual contacts into reliable allies while Mercury harmonizes with Jupiter and Saturn.
    USA TODAY, USA Today, 25 Oct. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Insensible.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/insensible. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.

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