sensibility
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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11 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sensibility", 11-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "sensibility" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "sensibility" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sensibility is aEnglishnoun. It means: Emotions or feelings arising from or relating to aesthetic or moral standards, especially those which are sensitive and thus likely to be hurt or offended. Pronounced /ˌsɛn(t)sɪˈbɪlɪti/. Often confused with sensitivity.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sensibility |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌsɛn(t)sɪˈbɪlɪti/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #22,502 |
| Misspellings tracked | 17 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sensibility is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌsɛn(t)sɪˈbɪlɪti/. Corpus data places it at rank #22,502 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 17 documented wrong-spelling variants for sensibility, with forms such as "esnsibility", "senisbility", and "sennsibility". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "sensitivity", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English sensibilite (“physical ability to sense or perceive; sensitivity to pain; type of perception by a sense organ; perception, understanding; image imprinted on the mind during perception; (philosophy) capacity of the soul to receive in… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is sensibility, spelled S-E-N-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Emotions or feelings arising from or relating to aesthetic or moral standards, especially those which are sensitive and thus likely to be hurt or offended.
- 2The ability to feel, perceive, or sense; responsiveness to sensory stimuli; sensitivity; also, the degree to which someone or something (especially a sensory organ or tissue) is able to respond to sensory stimuli.
- 3The quality of being easily affected by external forces or stimuli; also, of a measuring instrument: the quality of being able to detect small changes in the environment.
- 4Keen sensitivity to matters of creative expression or feeling; artistic or emotional awareness.
- 5Keen sensitivity to matters of creative expression or feeling; artistic or emotional awareness.
- 6Awareness; also, understanding.
- 7The capacity of something to be perceived by the senses; perceptibility.
- 8Of a plant or one of its parts: the ability to move in response to a stimulus.
- 9The ability to perceive or sense as opposed to the ability to understand; also, in the philosophy of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): emotion or feeling as opposed to the will.
- 10An emotional sense or understanding of something.
- 11A sign or token of appreciation or gratitude.
Etymology
From Late Middle English sensibilite (“physical ability to sense or perceive; sensitivity to pain; type of perception by a sense organ; perception, understanding; image imprinted on the mind during perception; (philosophy) capacity of the soul to receive information from the senses, perceptibility; (in the plural) the senses”), from Middle French sensibilité and Old French sensibilité (“characteristic or state of being capable of sensation”) (modern French sensibilité), and from their etymon Late Latin sēnsibilitās (“intelligence; perception, sensation; sensitiveness; meaning or sense of words”), from Latin sēnsibilis (“detectable; perceptible, sensible”) (from sentiō (“to perceive with the senses, feel, sense; to be aware or sensible of; etc.”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sent- (“to perceive; to think”)) + -bilis (suffix forming adjectives denoting a capacity or worth of being acted upon)) + -tās (suffix forming abstract nouns denoting states of being). By surface analysis, sensible + -ity (suffix forming nouns). Sense 6 (“in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant: emotion or feeling as opposed to the will”) is a use of the word as a calque of German Sinnlichkeit (“receptivity and devotion to what is experienced by the senses; desire for or openness to eroticism, sensuality”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: esnsibility,senisbility,sennsibility,sensbiility,sensibbility,sensibiilty,sensibilitty,sensibilityy,sensibiliyt,sensibillity,sensibiltiy,sensibliity,sensiiblity,senssibility,sesnibility,snesibility,ssensibility
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sensibility
Misspelling Variants of "sensibility"
Frequency rank: #22,502 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: