The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sensitive \Sen"si*tive\, a. [F. sensitif. See Sense.]
Having sense of feeling; possessing or exhibiting the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects; as, a sensitive soul.
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Having quick and acute sensibility, either to the action of external objects, or to impressions upon the mind and feelings; highly susceptible; easily and acutely affected.
She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny.
--Macaulay. (Mech.) Having a capacity of being easily affected or moved; as, a sensitive thermometer; sensitive scales.
(Chem. & Photog.) Readily affected or changed by certain appropriate agents; as, silver chloride or bromide, when in contact with certain organic substances, is extremely sensitive to actinic rays.
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Serving to affect the sense; sensible. [R.]
A sensitive love of some sensitive objects.
--Hammond. -
Of or pertaining to sensation; depending on sensation; as, sensitive motions; sensitive muscular motions excited by irritation. --E. Darwin. Sensitive fern (Bot.), an American fern ( Onoclea sensibilis), the leaves of which, when plucked, show a slight tendency to fold together. Sensitive flame (Physics), a gas flame so arranged that under a suitable adjustment of pressure it is exceedingly sensitive to sounds, being caused to roar, flare, or become suddenly shortened or extinguished, by slight sounds of the proper pitch. Sensitive joint vetch (Bot.), an annual leguminous herb ( [AE]schynomene hispida), with sensitive foliage. Sensitive paper, paper prepared for photographic purpose by being rendered sensitive to the effect of light. Sensitive plant. (Bot.)
A leguminous plant ( Mimosa pudica, or M. sensitiva, and other allied species), the leaves of which close at the slightest touch.
Any plant showing motions after irritation, as the sensitive brier ( Schrankia) of the Southern States, two common American species of Cassia ( C. nictitans, and C. Cham[ae]crista), a kind of sorrel ( Oxalis sensitiva), etc. [1913 Webster] -- Sen"si*tive*ly, adv. -- Sen"si*tive*ness, n.
Usage examples of "sensitive paper".
No conceivable printing device - not even the light-writers which had no moving parts except the fine beam from a miniature laser that inscribed words on photo-sensitive paper - could keep up with Shalmaneser's nanosecond mental processes.
Albright might have some kind of pressure device under there, or perhaps heat-sensitive paper.
No conceivable printing device - not even the light-writers which had no moving parts except the fine beam from a miniature laser that inscribed words on photo-sensitive paper - could keep up with Shalmaneser'.
She bent silently and handed him a card form, pressed his fingers, one by one, against the special molecular-sensitive paper that recorded, invisibly, the grooves and whorls of the raised lines, pore-patterns, skin type and texture.
The key chattered now and then, as if talking to itself, and wrote out light streaks on a slowly revolving drum, where sensitive paper recorded the coded messages.
On a slowly travelling, heat-sensitive paper, six heated-point styli drew complicated traces.
He could feel the unit in his hand whir as different electronic circuits were being triggered, then a small sheet of heat-sensitive paper emerged from one end of the unit.
Watching the tiny thermo pen form it on the scanner's heat-sensitive paper, the cadets could no longer doubt that the Heart Stars had some way of slamming an impulse into the supposedly closed, independent universe of a ship on Haertel overdrive, and, presumably, getting it back out again, bearing precise information.
He slipped a large sheet of sensitive paper into place and made the exposure.