INSENSITIVE Synonyms: 136 Similar and Opposite Words

insensitive

adjective

(ˌ)in-ˈsen(t)-s(ə-)tiv

Definition of insensitive

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

as in numb

lacking in sensation or feeling fingers rendered insensitive by the cold

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

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 insensitive Other retailers have also pulled merchandise that critics deemed racially insensitive, discriminatory or offensive after public backlash and social media protests. — Star Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 25 Aug. 2026 So have other terms considered insensitive, such as master/slave and blackhat/whitehat. — Jo MacKiewicz, The Conversation, 25 Aug. 2026 Watts was also hindering the healing process by being insensitive and self-centered, friends say. — Cheyenne Roundtree, Rolling Stone, 20 Aug. 2026 Many assumed that Ramée was white, and believed that his comment was not only cringe but also insensitive. — Owen Carry, USA Today, 11 Aug. 2026 See All Example Sentences for insensitive

Recent Examples of Synonyms for insensitive

Adjective

Within hours, their yacht vanishes, Matt is abducted by a gang of ruthless pirates led by Langbore (Copley), and paradise becomes a trap.

— Alex Ritman, Variety, 14 Sep. 2026
Arsenal created more than enough to help themselves to a bunch of goals in Naples, only to get stuck in anti-ruthless mode.

— Amy Lawrence, New York Times, 9 Sep. 2026

Definition of ruthless

Adjective

On one Anderson sack late in the first quarter, Allen kicked his feet in agony and later revealed the hit made his left arm go numb.

— Tim Graham, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2026
When the old man dies, her numb reaction appears caught between grief and relief, though her two adult sons show little understanding of her emotional state.

— Guy Lodge, Variety, 30 Aug. 2026

Definition of numb

Adjective

Cora, the granddaughter of a woman kidnapped from West Africa and sold into slavery, flees her captor’s plantation, plunging her into the book’s alternate steampunk reality where she is pursued by the merciless slave catcher Ridgeway.

— David Faris, TheWeek, 16 Sep. 2026
But the movie very much belongs to Trinca and Bruni Tedeschi, just as Anna belongs to the merciless stranger.

— David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 8 Sep. 2026

Definition of merciless

Adjective

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.

— David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 13 Feb. 2026
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.

— Rebecca Schneid, Time, 21 Oct. 2025

Definition of numbed

Adjective

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.

— Emily Cox, ARTnews.com, 22 May 2026
Instead of looking like a sleek urban loft, the room can quickly start to feel cold, stony, and impersonal.

— Natasha Bazika, Martha Stewart, 9 May 2026

Definition of stony

Adjective

He had been viciously attacked seemingly while asleep, struck multiple times in the face with a sharp, ax-like instrument, The Herald News reported.

— Lynsey Eidell, PEOPLE, 17 Sep. 2026
Rahaf swings her prosthetics to the song, and at one point, wraps her small arms around Accurso’s neck — following the song’s instructions and pretending to be asleep.

— CT Jones, Rolling Stone, 15 Sep. 2026

Definition of asleep

Adjective

Then with Lee, in the timeline closest to our present day, her heartbreaking, hard-to-stomach testimony means nothing to a callous judge who sentences her to death three times over.

— Ben Travers, IndieWire, 18 Sep. 2026
Worth putting a pin in Catherine’s reaction to Lamb’s callous reference to Charles Partner, the late First Desk chief and turncoat who employed Catherine as his personal assistant.

— Scott Tobias, Vulture, 16 Sep. 2026

Definition of callous

Adjective

Civilizations could have risen to their zenith and crumbled in the time our micrometeoroid spent traversing the unfeeling expanse of interplanetary space, but its demise lasted but a fraction of a second.

— Anthony Wood, Space.com, 21 July 2026
Readers can judge Jane and me, deciding that one of us was unfeeling or uncomprehending.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 13 July 2026