Definition of "sensibility" []

• The ability to feel or perceive. (noun)
• Keen intellectual perception: the sensibility of a painter to color. (noun)
• Mental or emotional responsiveness toward something, such as the feelings of another. (noun)
• Receptiveness to impression, whether pleasant or unpleasant; acuteness of feeling. Often used in the plural: "The sufferings of the Cuban people shocked our sensibilities” ( George F. Kennan). (noun)
• Refined awareness and appreciation in matters of feeling. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "These ocular spectra are of four kinds: 1st, Such as are owing to a less sensibility of a defined part of the retina; or _spectra from defect of sensibility. _ 2d, Such as are owing to a greater sensibility of a defined part of the retina; or _spectra from excess of sensibility_. 3d, Such as resemble their object in its colour as well as form; which may be termed"
• "To qualify the term sensibility with any adjective inevitably means losing the denotation that sensible things can be the road to meaning."
• "We apply the term sensibility to the receptivity of the mind for impressions, in so far as it is in some way affected; and, on the other hand, we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, or the spontaneity of cognition, understanding."