insentience

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in·sen·tient

(ĭn-sĕn′shənt)

adj.

Devoid of sensation or consciousness; inanimate.

in·sen′tience n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

insentience - lacking consciousness or ability to perceive sensations

inanimateness, lifelessness - not having life

sentience - the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "gave sentience to slugs and newts"- Richard Eberhart

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References in periodicals archive ?

As she works on her sculptures--positioning them, dressing them, tightening their bolts, and carrying their lifeless bodies--her frustration with their insentience mounts.

CAROLINE MESQUITA

When machinism surrenders mind, the starting point is insentience and we are quickly lost.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION

They claim that "it was a typical male power move, some might even say 'an oxymoron, gender-wise,' that the chairperson of the board of a feminist foundation should be a man, of the nuclear-family persuasion, his only claim to that office that he was a relative of Clara's, herself a martyr to male chauvinist insentience." (23)

Women in Mordecai Richler's novels: is there a problem?

A thought emerging out of insentience, it hovers brilliant as a memory in the mind's murk.

The Kingdom of the Medusae

Before focusing on music in particular, I wish to dedicate some discussion to McLuhan's (1969) general conception of the cultural role of artistic activity as the "indictment of human insentience past and present" (p.