SENSIBIL'ITY, noun

1. Susceptibility of impressions; the capacity for feeling or perceiving the impressions of external objects; applied to the animal bodies; as when we say, a frozen limb has lost its sensibility.

2. Acuteness of sensation; applied to the body.

3. Capacity of acuteness of perception; that quality of the soul which renders it susceptible of impressions; delicacy of feeling; as sensibility to pleasure or pain; sensibility to shame or praise; exquisite sensibility.

4. Actual feeling.

This adds to my great sensibility. Burke.

[This word is often used in this manner for sensation.]

5. It is sometimes used in the plural.

His sensibilities seem rather to have been those of patriotism, than of wounded pride.

Marshall.

Sensibilities unfriendly to happiness, may be acquired. Encyc.

6. Nice perception, so to speak, of a balance; that quality of a balance which renders it movable with the smallest weight, or the quality or state of any insrument that renders it easily affected; as the sensibility of a balance or of a thermometer.