| 释义 |
sensibility|sɛnsɪˈbɪlɪtɪ|
[ad. L. sensibilitās (-tātem), f. sensibilis: see sensible a. and -ity. Cf. F. sensibilité (1314 in Hatz.-Darm.), Pr. sensibilitee, Sp. sensibilidad, Pg. sensibilidade, It. sensibilità, sensibilitade, -tate.
Rare until the middle of the 18th century.]
†1.
a. pl. Sensible species; the emanations from bodies, which were supposed to be the cause of sensation.
b. Capability of being perceived by the senses. Obs. rare.
a.1374Chaucer Boeth. v. met. iv. (1868) 166 Philosophers þat hyȝten stoiciens þat wenden þat ymages & sensibilites [sensus et imagines] þat is to sein sensible ymaginaciouns..weren inprentid in to soules fro bodies wiþ oute forþe.
b.1616R. C. Times' Whistle i. 496 That's only good In their grosse braines, whose visibility And appetituall sensibility Lies open to their sence.
2. a. Power of sensation or perception; † the specific function of any of the organs of sense (obs.). Now often, the (greater or less) readiness of an organ or tissue to respond to sensory stimuli; sensitiveness.
c1400tr. Secreta Secret., Gov. Lordsh. xci. 97 Þe sensibilitez of þe Eres er harkenyng of souns. Ibid. xcii. 97 Þe sensibilyte of þe tonge ys by way of tastynge & sauour. 1412–20Lydg. Troy Bk. iii. 5687 Comparysownyd..To a sowle þat were vegetable, Þe whiche, with-oute sensibilite Mynystreth lyf in herbe, flour, and tre. 1533Elyot Cast. Helthe (1541) 52 The sinewes which make sensibilitie, the rootes of whom are in the braine. 1769Cook 1st Voy. i. iv. in Hawkesworth Voy. (1773) II. 51 Having now been exposed to the cold and the snow near an hour and an half, some of the rest began to lose their sensibility. 1789W. Buchan Dom. Med. (1790) 557 The great sensibility of their [children's] organs. 1794Paley Nat. Theol. xxvi. (1819) 431 An increased, no less than an impaired sensibility, induces a state of disease and suffering. 1807Med. Jrnl. XVII. 523 The anatomically non-corresponding points of the two eyes may be possessed of equal sensibility. 1834McMurtrie Cuvier's Anim. Kingd. 16 Sensibility resides in the nervous system. 1875W. S. Watson Dis. Nose 21 Common sensation or tactile sensibility. 1879Cassell's Techn. Educ. I. 350/1 A more than normal sensibility in the retina is an inconvenience.
b. Philos. Power or faculty of feeling, capacity of sensation and emotion as distinguished from cognition and will.
1838[Haywood] tr. Kant's Crit. Pure Reas. 57 If we will term the receptivity of our mind for receiving representations..sensibility, so is..the faculty of itself bringing forth representations, or the Spontaneity of the cognition, the Understanding. 1858O. W. Holmes Aut. Breakf.-t. x. 96 A man's body..is whatever is occupied by his will and his sensibility. 1861Mill Utilit. iv. 59 Even though these pleasures are much diminished by..decay of his passive sensibilities. 1877E. Caird Philos. Kant ii. iii. 233 Our assertions must be based on the very nature of our own sensibility, and not on the nature of the objects affecting it.
c. dissociation of sensibility: T. S. Eliot's term for a separation of thought from feeling which he held to be first manifested in poetry of the later seventeenth century.
1921T. S. Eliot in Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Oct. 669/4 The poets of the seventeenth century..possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience... In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered. 1930E. M. W. Tillyard Milton 356 Some sort of dissociation of sensibility in Milton, not necessarily undesirable, has to be admitted; but that he was responsible for any such dissociation in others (at least till this general dissociation had inevitably set in) is untrue. 1943L. C. Knights Explorations (1963) 93 It is as a contribution to our understanding of the seventeenth century ‘dissociation of sensibility’—from which, as Mr. Eliot remarked,..‘we have never recovered’—that I wish to consider some of the work of Francis Bacon. 1947T. S. Eliot Milton 7, I wish first to mention another reproach against Milton, that represented by the phrase ‘dissociation of sensibility’... I believe that the general affirmation represented by the phrase ‘dissociation of sensibility’..retains some validity, but I now incline to agree with Dr. Tillyard that to lay the burden on the shoulders of Milton and Dryden was a mistake. 1957F. Kermode Romantic Image viii. 143 The theory of the dissociation of sensibility is, in fact, the most successful version of a Symbolist attempt to explain why the modern world resists works of art that testify to the poet's special, anti-intellectual way of knowing truth.
†3. Mental perception, awareness of something.
c1412Hoccleve De Reg. Princ. 5009 Þei erren foule, & goon out of þe wey; Of trouth haue þei scant sensibilite. a1635Naunton Fragm. Reg. (Arb.) 37 That he said unto the Queen, with some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France: Madam, I beseech you be content not to fear [etc.].
4. a. Emotional consciousness; glad or sorrowful, grateful or resentful recognition of a person's conduct, or of a fact or a condition of things.
1751Orrery Rem. Swift iii. (ed. 5) 21 The treatment was thought injurious, and Swift expressed his sensibility of it in a short, but satyrical copy of verses entitled The Discovery. 1760–72H. Brooke Fool of Qual. (1809) II. 83, I am very sensible..of your friendship.., and that sensibility constitutes..my happiness. 1776Johnson Let. to Mrs. Thrale 1 Apr., I was on Saturday at Mrs. Montague's, who expressed great sensibility of your loss. 1779Forrest Voy. N. Guinea 250, I expressed my sensibility of his many marks of favour to myself. 1790J. Duché Discourses II. xvii. 363 A sensibility of our own weakness. 1818Lady Charleville in Lady Morgan Passages Autobiog. (1859) 244, I will only speak of my real sensibility of Sir Charles's kind politeness.
†b. pl. A person's feelings of gratitude. Obs.
1753Richardson Grandison (1781) IV. xxii. 168, I cannot speak my grateful sensibilities.
†c. A mark of appreciation or consideration; a delicate attention. Obs.
1795Sir J. Dalrymple Let. to Admiralty 9 Every sensibility that we can shew to our brave Officers and Seamen..is too little for what they do for us.
5. a. Quickness and acuteness of apprehension or feeling; the quality of being easily and strongly affected by emotional influences; sensitiveness. Also, with const., sensitiveness to, keen sense of something.
1711Addison Spect. No. 231 ⁋7 Modesty..is a kind of quick and delicate Feeling in the Soul... It is such an exquisite Sensibility, as warns a woman to shun the first Appearance of every thing which is hurtful. 1741Hume Ess. i. 2 There is a certain Delicacy of Passion, to which some People are subject, that makes them extremely sensible to all the Accidents of Life... And when a Person, that has this Sensibility of Temper, meets with any Misfortune, his Sorrow or Resentment takes intire Possession of him. 1756Burke Subl. & B. Introd. (1759) 34 It frequently happens that a very poor judge, merely by force of a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected by a very poor piece, than the best judge by the most perfect. 1779–81Johnson L.P., Philips Wks. 1787 IV. 197 He had great sensibility of censure. 1794Godwin Cal. Williams 101 My life has been spent in the keenest and most unintermitted sensibility to reputation. 1799R. Sickelmore Agnes & Leonora II. 9 Her feelings, which had been so acutely wounded..as almost to hurry sensibility to madness, now assailed her with renovated force. 1802–12Bentham Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) V. 655 A man's sensibility to pecuniary influence. 1810W. Wilson Hist. Dissent. Churches III. 50 He discovered great sensibility and grief on this occasion. 1815Jane Austen Emma ii. vi, More acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings. 1822Hazlitt Table-t. Ser. i. ix. 192 That trembling sensibility which is awake to every change and every modification of its ever-varying impressions. 1832W. Irving Alhambra I. 203, I have often remarked this sensibility of the common people of Spain to the charms of natural objects. 1843Ruskin Mod. Paint. I. ii. §6. iii. §4. 410 A sensibility to colour..being very different from a sensibility to form. a1859Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxiv. V. 197 From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his grandfather could draw any sign of sensibility. 1874Sherman Mem. (1875) II. xxiv. 395, I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to incur it.
b. pl. Emotional capacities; † instincts of liking or aversion.
1634W. Tirwhyt tr. Balzac's Lett. 36 It is fitting that reason convince our Sensibilities, causing us to agree to what is otherwise distasteful unto us. 1858O. W. Holmes Aut. Breakf.-t. xii. 111 Something intensely human, narrow, and definite pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes. 1892Bierce In Midst of Life 109 Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities—his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged.
c. sing. and pl. Liability to feel offended or hurt by unkindness or lack of respect; susceptibilities.
1769Gray in Corr. w. Nicholls (1843) 85, I wish he would not give too much way to his own sensibilities, and still less (in this case) to the sensibilities of other people. 1778J. Laurens in Sparks Corr. Amer. Rev. (1853) II. 203 The Count's sensibility was much wounded. 1806–7J. Beresford Miseries Hum. Life (1826) vii. xli, Grating the sensibility, the prepossessions..of the person to whom you are speaking, by some unguarded words. 1855Prescott Philip II, ii. i. (1857) I. 156 The sensibilities of a commercial people.
6. In the 18th and early 19th c. (afterwards somewhat rarely): Capacity for refined emotion; delicate sensitiveness of taste; also, readiness to feel compassion for suffering, and to be moved by the pathetic in literature or art.
1756–82Warton Ess. Pope I. v. 262 The force of the repetition of the significant epithet ‘foreign’, need not be pointed out to any reader of sensibility. 1762Cowper To Miss Macartney 68 Oh! grant, kind heav'n, to me, Long as I draw ethereal air, Sweet Sensibility. 1768Sterne Sent. Journ., Bourbonnois, Dear sensibility! source unexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! 1807Byron To Romance v, Where Affectation holds her seat, And sickly Sensibility. 1827Carlyle Richter Misc. I. 12 Unless seasoned and purified by humour, sensibility is apt to run wild. 1843Prescott Mexico iii. v. (1850) I. 401 Those monuments of Oriental magnificence, whose light, aërial forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every traveller of sensibility and taste. 1848Thackeray Van. Fair lxii, This lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent when she heard Mozart?
7. (transf. from 2.) Of plants and their organs, also of instruments (esp. a balance, magnetic needle, etc.) or other inorganic objects: Aptness to be affected by external influences; sensitiveness. Const. to (rarely of).
1662Sir S. Tuke Adv. Five Hours i. 6 Your Story (I confess) is strangely moving; Yet if you could my Fortune weigh with yours, In scales of equal Sensibility, You would not change your Sufferings, for mine. 1783Cullum in Phil. Trans. LXXIV. 417 As the two last are solstitial, and rather delicate plants, I wondered the less at their sensibility. 1793Smeaton Edystone L. §184 Mortar made up with salt⁓water, might equally discover its sensibility of moisture. 1825Nicholson Oper. Mech. 42 Thus a receptacle is given to the fluid [mercury], which would otherwise disturb the centrifugal force and impair the sensibility of the instrument. 1841R. Hunt Art Photogr. 3 The want of sensibility in the preparation..rendered it necessary that the prepared plate should be exposed..from seven to twelve hours. 1866R. M. Ferguson Electr. (1870) 21 The sensibility of the [magnetic] needle. 1879Thomson & Tait Nat. Phil. I. i. §431 Qualities of a balance:..Sensibility... The definite measure of the sensibility is the angle through which the beam is deflected by a stated difference between the loads in the pans. 1880C. & F. Darwin Movem. Pl. 193 Here then we have a case of specialized sensibility, like that of the glands of Drosera. 1882Vines tr. Sachs' Bot. 877 The differing sensibility of leaves to variations of temperature on the one hand, and to variations in the intensity of light on the other. |