1
as in ruthless
having or showing a lack of sympathy or tender feelings
an insensitive remark about his deceased wife that was incredibly rude
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in numb
lacking in sensation or feeling
fingers rendered insensitive by the cold
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of insensitive
Last year, Love Island USA faced a similar situation when a contestant went on a podcast and used racially insensitive language.
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Armando Tinoco,
Deadline,
4 June 2026
My grown kids still act like kids — selfish and insensitive.
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Ticked Off,
The Orlando Sentinel,
29 May 2026
Jewish groups, politicians and commentators condemned the costume as offensive and insensitive, particularly because the image appeared shortly before Holocaust Memorial Day.
—
Jack Royston,
MSNBC Newsweek,
14 May 2026
My parents acknowledged that selling without a collective goodbye had been insensitive.
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Chiara Barzini,
Vogue,
9 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for insensitive
Armando Tinoco,
Deadline,
4 June 2026
My grown kids still act like kids — selfish and insensitive.
—
Ticked Off,
The Orlando Sentinel,
29 May 2026
Jewish groups, politicians and commentators condemned the costume as offensive and insensitive, particularly because the image appeared shortly before Holocaust Memorial Day.
—
Jack Royston,
MSNBC Newsweek,
14 May 2026
My parents acknowledged that selling without a collective goodbye had been insensitive.
—
Chiara Barzini,
Vogue,
9 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for insensitive
Recent Examples of Synonyms for insensitive
Adjective
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Natural selection is usually ruthless about weeding out traits with no function.
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Supergirl builds to a final showdown with Krem of the Yellow Hills, the ruthless Brigands leader who murdered Ruthye’s family and poisoned Krypto early in the film.
Adjective
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Relationships often suffer as people withdraw or feel emotionally numb.
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Some doctors understandably get a bit numb to the pain of their patients.
Adjective
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The poem that precedes it, the Iliad, is a cruel and beautiful work, the ultimate story of war; the Odyssey has its warlike passages, but its central energies seem almost commonplace beside the merciless fury of Achilles.
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Humility is the posture; the standard is merciless.
Adjective
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When Bill’s older brother Henry (Barry Ward) finds the pianist in numbed solitude in his dingy apartment, Bill has canceled all his upcoming gigs, saying Scotty cannot be replaced.
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Ingber also notes the numbed response to these strikes from much of the American public, something that, in part, may come from the routine nature of these drone strikes as something that the nation has become desensitized to dropping bombs on enemies.
Adjective
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Oscar Wilde, for example, reposes beneath a hulking deity whose iconoclastic castration, back in 1961, did little to restrain pilgrims seeking to smear red lips across his stony physique.
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Instead of looking like a sleek urban loft, the room can quickly start to feel cold, stony, and impersonal.
Adjective
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Ed Lomena, the attorney representing the pilot — who asked not to be identified by name for fear of job repercussions — says his client was asleep when the creatures entered the room.
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His attorney, Ed Lowena, said his client was asleep when the disturbance began.
Adjective
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To its left-wing voter base, Labour seemed callous.
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Watching the movie and Marcel’s fragile belief in a world so callous is to feel a surge of possibility for humanity.
Adjective
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As Micah so nicely puts it, there’s a narrative magnetism to Pitman’s repo encounters, many of which play out as micro-dramas of people in crisis confronting an embodied messenger of the great, unfeeling, deeply unfair American financial system.
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Ditto Hugh Jackman’s unerring performance — perhaps his finest dramatic work yet — as a savage, unfeeling thug and unrepentant murderer and thief.
Cite this Entry
“Insensitive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/insensitive. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
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