adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a controversial/sensitive issue (=an issue that causes strong feelings and arguments)
▪ Abortion is a controversial issue.
a sensitive topic (=one that must be dealt with very carefully, because it may offend people)
▪ It is unusual for a judge to speak publicly about a sensitive topic such as religion.
a sensitive/touchy subject (=one that people may get upset about)
▪ Steer clear of complicated issues or sensitive subjects.
be sensitive to criticism (=to react to criticism, often in a bad way)
▪ He was highly sensitive to criticism in the press.
happy/sensitive/brave/simple etc soul
▪ He is really quite a sensitive soul.
of a nervous/sociable/sensitive etc disposition (=having a nervous etc character)
▪ The film is not suitable for people of a nervous disposition.
sensitive (=becoming red or sore easily)
▪ Special shampoos are available for those with sensitive skin.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ Every pore of his skin felt aware, as sensitive as it did after the luxury of a hot bath.
▪ She wondered if they would be as sensitive on her skin as they looked.
▪ The monoclonal antibody that we used is as sensitive to halofantrine as to its main metabolite, whose half-life exceeds 3 days.
▪ Government grants were available in cases where rail would keep lorries off roads regarded as sensitive.
▪ People who don't have a weight problem may simply not be as sensitive to these shifts.
▪ Even Howie can't stand Stonehenge, and Howie's about as sensitive as the fire back.
▪ She was becoming almost as sensitive to him as she had been all those years ago.
▪ Indeed, how you measure something as sensitive as intelligence poses problems.
environmentally
▪ Five of the dales of the Yorkshire Dales National Park have been designated as environmentally sensitive areas.
▪ Mark Foley, R-Fla., that would earmark $ 210 million to purchase environmentally sensitive areas near the Everglades.
▪ It is significant that such a mainstream and commercial manufacturer is hoping to launch an environmentally sensitive label.
▪ The extension would provide workings for a further 25 years in the heart of an environmentally sensitive area.
▪ They painted samples in an exercise designed to produce a better understanding of the Ecotech concept of more environmentally sensitive products.
▪ For those times it was an environmentally sensitive organisation.
▪ We will create new incentives to follow environmentally sensitive strategies and behaviour.
▪ Proposals I announced last month to create 12 new environmentally sensitive areas will more than treble the area covered.
especially
▪ In fact the water authorities are especially sensitive to criticism in the media.
▪ Honda uses great care to make the goals reasonable and attainable, and the top leaders are especially sensitive in that regard.
▪ Teenagers are said to be especially sensitive to the financial implications and aware of their own lack of power in the matter.
▪ J., journalists are especially sensitive to charges of brutality by sports stars.
▪ Some playing positions are prone to collide with a Floyd's fine tuning system and this one seems to be especially sensitive.
▪ You might also want to protect especially sensitive vegetation with plastic.
▪ Infant mortality is frequently assumed to be an especially sensitive indicator of severe poverty.
extremely
▪ It goes without saying that any infringements of these new restrictions will imperil what is already an extremely sensitive access agreement.
▪ The Arizona players are extremely sensitive on the talent-gap issue, especially when reminded of it by Tucson columnist Greg Hansen.
▪ Earthworms have extremely sensitive skins and can not thrive under acid conditions.
▪ This is a little girl who is extremely sensitive to touch; she feels fragile, thin-skinned, easily breakable herself.
▪ All osmotic pressure measurements are extremely sensitive to temperature and must be carried out under rigorously controlled temperature conditions.
▪ As more species of life are slowly added to the embryonic aquarium, the water becomes extremely sensitive to vicious cycles.
▪ It was an extremely sensitive matter, they were told.
▪ It was, moreover, an accusation to which its adherents in the Royal Society were extremely sensitive.
highly
▪ We need to be aware, however, that the school environment is a delicate ecosystem, highly sensitive to political whim.
▪ Managers need to handle highly sensitive direct contacts with clients.
▪ Such a condition also makes living organisms highly sensitive to their environment, reflecting the characteristics of mind and consciousness themselves.
▪ Holystone and Desktop, for instance, designate several highly sensitive undersea operations.
▪ For Tod is highly sensitive to this material.
▪ Unlike the highly sensitive child, the defiant child has some physical characteristics that make a more aggressive approach possible.
▪ Hence, the blind person may develop a superb sense of smell or highly sensitive hearing.
▪ Infants are highly sensitive to the quality of adult attention.
how
▪ There: people said this and that about him, but no one knew how sensitive he was, how kind.
▪ Events in the United States fourteen years later showed how sensitive the country was to Ameri-can casualties.
▪ His acute sense of observation was remarkable, and his pictures show how sensitive he was to his surroundings.
▪ This would depend on just how sensitive the child is and how her nervous system compensates for her sensitivity.
▪ Notice how sensitive the board is to weight movements the further back you step.
▪ The book also shows how sensitive preparations and aftercare can help ministers overcome some of the difficulties of a funeral.
▪ This analysis shows how sensitive these measures are to varying assumptions about unemployment and female labour for Participation.
▪ The third aim of the project concerns accuracy analysis: how sensitive to data revisions are standard tests of forecasting accuracy?
less
▪ As age increases, the inner ear becomes less sensitive to high frequencies.
▪ Sometimes a self-absorbed child is less sensitive visually as well.
▪ Those higher doses, in turn, lead to even less sensitive synapses.
▪ Teeth usually become less sensitive as their nerve and blood supply decreases.
▪ The match angler's fixed link-leger is less sensitive than a fixed paternoster as can be appreciated by studying Fig. 1.
▪ Patients became less sensitive to the drug.
▪ Waste exporters are now seeking less sensitive areas.
▪ The performance aspirations of any single breakthrough team were far less sensitive to interdependency.
more
▪ To experience something, ourselves, is to make us more sensitive to the needs and wants of others.
▪ This new reality helped engender a more sensitive ecclesial approach to the plight of Catholics in broken marriages.
▪ Cattle stealing was more sensitive to economic fluctuations in the twentieth century than it had been earlier.
▪ Yields of shorter-term notes, which are more sensitive to overnight rates set by the Fed, fell more.
▪ Some people are just much more sensitive and perceptive in transmitting or receiving data than others.
▪ Dennis is probably more sensitive to age-related remarks than most of us.
▪ His explanation should have been more sensitive to the interplay between local and national democratic influences on the policing of industrial disputes.
▪ Its a lot more sensitive than that.
most
▪ The synthesis of modifications in the anticodon stem and loop were shown to be the most sensitive ones.
▪ But how could he bear to strike that most sensitive part of himself in the process?
▪ Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists.
▪ Many of the most sensitive writers and artists of that period denounced the factories and the cities that sprawled out around them.
▪ It's designed to protect and soothe even the most sensitive male skins and prices start at £2.45.
▪ Dole, to his credit, has repeatedly declined to play politics in the most sensitive diplomatic areas.
▪ The announcement will cause concern in the Middle East, where water is one of the most sensitive strategic issues.
▪ In the most sensitive cases yields were reduced by 1 percent for every 1 percent cut in the ozone layer.
particularly
▪ There may also be a deep sense of insecurity about venturing off one's own academic patch which makes people particularly sensitive.
▪ It is there-fore not surprising that during this time the Carleton community was particularly sensitive to sexist behavior.
▪ Thirdly, its equilibrium solubility is particularly sensitive to temperature, reaching a maximum at 32.3°C.
▪ The person will have a high level of emotional arousal and be particularly sensitive to social influences which can affect arousal.
▪ This is a particularly sensitive area and care should be taken to reveal no more than is necessary.
▪ These initiation sites may represent areas containing calcium stores that are particularly sensitive to activators such as InsP 3.
▪ Jack de Bie's playing is rhythmically alive, thoughtful and passionate as required, with some particularly sensitive pedalling in evidence.
▪ Young children seem to have been particularly sensitive to the Windscale accident.
politically
▪ As with advocacy, this requires clarity of thought and an ability to think quickly, in a politically sensitive environment.
▪ State-owned enterprises are believed to face pressures to select profit-reducing choices where, for example, price rises are politically sensitive.
▪ The Senate move was part of a broader bipartisan agreement on how the politically sensitive investigation will proceed.
▪ One application for the X-ray destruction method could be in the politically sensitive area of destroying chemical weapons.
▪ What Clinton did with the veterans' budget illustrates the dilemma the White House faces with many politically sensitive constituencies.
▪ It may entail an obligation to obey certain of the more politically sensitive laws.
so
▪ But Alain, he is so sensitive, he has taken the affair to heart.
▪ Why should the Church feel so sensitive about its Black Virgins?
▪ For example, the power controls can be so sensitive that heat can be regulated by degree.
▪ He loved to play with trucks and cars and he was so sensitive to the other kids.
▪ The issue was so sensitive, he argued, that there should be a cross-party agreement.
▪ Because this child is so sensitive to feelings of embarrassment and humiliation, his needs must be respected.
▪ The reason they do not like it is that they are so sensitive about it.
▪ Summerlee had found an electric probe so sensitive it could detect the passage of a single electron.
too
▪ He listens attentively as questions are translated, chooses words carefully and dismisses several questions as too sensitive.
▪ Speedsensitive steering too sensitive at slow speeds.
▪ She was being too sensitive, she told herself.
▪ I thought Kareem was being a bit too sensitive, at the time.
▪ Both were too sensitive about the middle-of-the-road, liberal, humanitarian public.
▪ Everyone said I was born restless and too sensitive and intelligent for my own good.
▪ I know that he is retiring, but he need not be too sensitive.
very
▪ Adolescents are very sensitive about pretence, hypocrisy or deceit on the part of their parents.
▪ Very good looking, very sensitive, but cheerful.
▪ Bat cries, as we have seen, are indeed often very loud, and their ears are very sensitive.
▪ They perceive me as very sensitive, eager to do the right thing.
▪ Apart from that it was observed that the left hand edge appeared not to be very sensitive.
▪ For example, consider a very sensitive child who is easily distracted by every sight and sound around her.
▪ The potassium ferricyanide component is very sensitive, and will detect iron in calcite with 1% ferrous carbonate in solid solution.
▪ Psychologists classify as many as 10 to 15 percent of us as very sensitive.
■ NOUN
area
▪ Pay attention to sensitive areas such as ears, lips and nose.
▪ Salvage logging should be prohibited in sensitive areas....
▪ The key question is how flexibility will be applied in sensitive areas such as foreign policy.
▪ Designating a somewhat less sensitive area of Soviet intercepts was the Delta series of code words.
▪ Now they're going back to a sensitive area.
▪ If accepted by the shipping community, it will mean masters' taking special precautions in 15 sensitive areas around Britain.
▪ We are touching here on the sensitive area of competitive tendering and of privatisation.
▪ Alex, however, subscribes to the standard conspiracy theory that the authorities undermine anyone investigating these sensitive areas.
child
▪ A sensitive child, she could tell that something was wrong with her father ... with everything.
▪ For example, consider a very sensitive child who is easily distracted by every sight and sound around her.
▪ The pain and humiliation to a sensitive child is crushing.
▪ Parents can help such highly sensitive children by showing them how to soothe themselves.
▪ However; the defiant child also tends to have a little better postural control than the overly sensitive child.
▪ Even more than the average child, sensitive children need to find ways to express their feelings.
▪ It is easier to be soothing with a highly sensitive child who is clingy and frightened than with a defiant child.
▪ That is because sensitive children, like all challenging children, have a wider range of behavior than more easy-going children.
information
▪ It is clear then that passive receipt of unpublished price sensitive information will suffice for liability for tippee trading.
▪ Included in this process will be the appropriate evaluation and utilization of Secure networks for the transmission of sensitive information.
▪ Also there are legal constraints on the use of price sensitive information.
▪ Those privy to sensitive information about mergers or acquisitions of companies worth millions or billions of pounds must not abuse that privilege.
▪ The market egalitarianism argument fails to draw a distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate use of non public price sensitive information.
▪ A trade magazine journalist was ordered in the High Court to disclose the source of commercially sensitive information.
▪ Some other sensitive information has limited disclosure.
▪ How would commercially sensitive information of one company be protected?
issue
▪ Expenses can be a sensitive issue but they should be available to all volunteers if needed.
▪ The development programme is also a sensitive issue.
▪ Weight remains a sensitive issue for Engler, who is constantly fighting a sometimes serious battle of the bulge.
▪ And being able to discuss sensitive issues with strangers while retaining a comfortable degree of anonymity often makes for startlingly intimate communication.
▪ Encourage employees to adopt a problem-solving attitude when discussing sensitive issues.
▪ How can teachers be supported to help them deal with sensitive issues?
▪ Male resistance to contraception, where it exists, is also linked to the sensitive issue of authority within the household.
man
▪ He looked like an intelligent, sensitive man, completely happy with his life.
▪ On that night Tryan, although a sensitive man, walks to the church through a jeering mob.
▪ Most shaving products now contain moisturising properties but for the really sensitive man, Wilkinson have formulated Skin Solutions.
▪ Like all artistes, he is a sensitive man and you never offend his sensibilities.
▪ Larry's a builder, Robin's an art dealer, a refined, elegant and sensitive man.
▪ Both Jeremiah and Paul had such feelings; they were sensitive men.
▪ Jeremiah comes across as a very sensitive man, who didn't like taking a message which was being ignored.
▪ Here's another example of just how sensitive men can be.
skin
▪ For anyone worried about extra sensitive skin, there's also a fragrance free wipe.
▪ Very dry and sensitive skins can not use alcohol-based cleansers and may even find water-cleansing too much.
▪ Earthworms have extremely sensitive skins and can not thrive under acid conditions.
▪ There's biological, biological with fabric conditioner, non-biological and non biological for sensitive skins, plus delicate fabric hand wash.
▪ Like chameleons, some are able to vary the colour of their sensitive skins, to remain camouflaged.
▪ However, we know that young or sensitive skins of any age require special attention.
▪ It was shown that some one with normally sensitive skin would not have been affected but that the purchaser had abnormally sensitive skin.
soul
▪ Is your baby a cheeky chappie or a sensitive soul?
▪ A sensitive soul walked into this town like a white missionary into a malarial swamp.
▪ Teachers, after all, are sensitive souls and easily upset - especially P.E. teachers.
▪ The sensitive souls found her more difficult to stomach.
subject
▪ But it is a sensitive subject.
▪ Shelby complained that Lake has failed to answer 25 detailed questions about a range of sensitive subjects.
▪ Sexuality is a sensitive subject, laced with complexities.
▪ Though that might touch on a sensitive subject ... I was sitting on the sofa, quietly crying.
▪ Partly perhaps because policing remains a controversial and sensitive subject in Ireland.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a sensitive musician
▪ A teenager used his personal computer to break into sensitive US Air Force files.
▪ He's sensitive about his bad teeth, so try not to look at them.
▪ I didn't realize that Lee was so sensitive about her family.
▪ If you are a public figure you can't afford to be too sensitive to criticism.
▪ Joel is such a sensitive boy.
▪ My brother pretends he's tough, but he's actually pretty sensitive.
▪ My children are very sensitive about being treated in a patronising way.
▪ Paul is too sensitive for this job. He can't take even the smallest criticism.
▪ Tell me if any of these spots are sensitive.
▪ The administration claims that the documents contain information of a highly sensitive political nature.
▪ The minister admitted that highly sensitive documents had been leaked to the press.
▪ The team is gathering information on the sensitive subject of child abuse.
▪ This is a very sensitive recorder - it picks up every word you say.
▪ Underneath all that macho stuff, he's really a sensitive guy.
▪ Your competitors may have access to the company intranet, so never discuss commercially sensitive issues on-line.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I knew we were on sensitive territory.
▪ In summary, increasing evidence from many studies has pointed to a sensitive period that is significant to the bonding experience.
▪ It is very sensitive to calcium and does not do well in alkaline or hard water.
▪ Some people are just much more sensitive and perceptive in transmitting or receiving data than others.
▪ The dark, clean-shaven face was strong and proud, the mouth firm yet sensitive.
▪ They are fit for any tank and, not being sensitive even to temperature variations, are suitable plants for beginners.
▪ They would not explode for a rabbit or fox, but were sensitive enough for a human body.
▪ When it comes to broaching the subject I don't think there's any sensitive way to do it.