supersensitiveadj.n.

1701 N. Grew Cosmol. Sacra ii. viii. 82 Albeit Phancy..can have no Perception, properly called Sensitive: Yet in that all Created beings, by mediation of Life and Motion, do Communicate; it may hereby be affected in some other analogous way: which, for distinction, may be called, Supersensitive.

1795 P. Will tr. C. Tschink Victim Magical Delusion III. 191 The interest he took in supersensitive objects..prompted me to expect that my artifices would find access to his heart.

1890 Path Feb. 343 Man may thus come to know the super-sensitive world precisely as he knows the things of sense and time, viz. by experience.

1999 Hist. & Theory 38 332 Herder would have simply moved the unitary and universal instance in human history to a super-sensitive realm in order to make the widest room in the secular realm for the infinite variety of its empirical manifestations.

1817 Christian Observer June 372/2 Of the Vicar of Wakefield, it is sufficient to observe, that..it is least likely to injure those who are least likely to read it; I mean young persons, and especially young women of delicate romantic super sensitive minds.

1857 in F. Churchill On Dis. Women (new ed.) iii. xvii. 735 She was supersensitive to sounds, light, &c.

1880 E. S. Phelps Sealed Orders 300 Her supersensitive ear detects the scratch of her mother's pen.

1949 W. B. Cannon & A. Rosenblueth Supersensitivity of Denervated Struct. ii. 11 They are often quite easily rendered supersensitive to some agent, e.g., adrenaline, by preliminary treatment with one or another chemical substance, e.g., cocaine or thyroxine.

1978 Life Sci. 23 1283 Rats were supersensitive to norepinephrine as well as to dopamine.

2010 Your Cat Feb. 35/1 Imagine how the flavour of freeze-dried fish explodes on your cat's super-sensitive taste buds!

1797 tr. J. S. Beck Princ. Crit. Philos. iii. i. 329 The morally good man seeks..a conception of the supersensitive [Ger. einen Begriff des Uebersinnlichen].

1877 A. B. Mackay Glory of Cross v. 131 Are we not naturally and necessarily led to see here, in the sensitive, the image and symbol of the supersensitive?

1915 Homiletic Rev. Jan. 66/1 His effort..to relate himself to the superhuman, the supersensitive, the supernatural of which he has always and everywhere been conscious.

1877 V. Durrant Mod. Minister I. xv. 129 She did not feel safe in Sleperton, and that instinctive and warning guide the supersensitive carry in their bosoms, counselled departure now the opportunity offered.

1885 C. L. Hunt Priv. Instr. Org. Magn. (ed. 3) 195 Persons liable to this disease [sc. ‘the Mesmeric Disease’] are known as Supersensitives.

1891 T. Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles II. xxxvi. 234 The self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive.

1918 Jrnl. Engineers' Club Philadelphia Nov. 521/1 Such pictures as these shown to children, particularly to the supersensitive, would excite ‘fear’ rather than ‘caution’.

1941 M. A. De Ford They were San Franciscans 315 He dreaded pain as all supersensitives do.

1993 W. Sheed My Life as Fan v. 108 Russell was one of those super-sensitives who threw up before all his games.

1840 T. Hood Open Quest. in New Monthly Mag. Aug. 528 What is the brute profanity that shocks The super-sensitively-serious feeling?

1883 T. S. Clouston Clin. Lect. Mental Dis. xvii. 555 A typical case of climacteric insanity begins by a loss of energising power, bodily and mental, of which the patient is rather supersensitively conscious.

2008 G. P. Korgeski Compl. Idiot's Guide to enhancing Social IQ vii. 97 You probably have an ‘average’ level of empathy most of the time—nobody will call you super-sensitively psychic about people's moods.

1830 Amer. Jrnl. Med. Sci. Feb. 338 Emesis contraindicated by supersensitiveness of the stomach, seemed yet demanded by the probable cause of that state, repletion by gross food.

1895 J. Chamberlain in Westm. Gaz. 22 July 2/3 That sectional supersensitiveness which tends to keep apart the two wings of the great National party.

1926 R. W. Lawson tr. G. von Hevesy & F. A. Paneth Man. Radioactivity xxv. 211 Radium burns are especially troublesome, because..even if they mend there remains a supersensitiveness of the skin.

2000 C. Shuman Pedagogical Economies iii. 90 Examination anxiety—understood as a shameful supersensitiveness—is his downfall.