MEANING
1. To make someone respond less strongly to something that previously caused an emotional reaction.
2. To reduce how strongly a person, body part, or biological system responds to a stimulus.
Use it for
describing reduced emotional response after repeated exposure; distinguishing emotional numbing from approval; explaining why repeated warnings may lose their impactNames a reduction in responsiveness, separating emotional habituation or numbing from bodily sensitivity. Writing functions: Causation / Relationships, Analysis / Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- desensitize viewers to violence
- become desensitized to suffering
- desensitize someone to a stimulus
On the page
The essay asks whether repeated images of disaster desensitize audiences or encourage sustained attention.
A person desensitized to an alarm may still understand the danger it signals.
The review distinguishes interventions intended to desensitize an allergic response from measures that avoid the allergen.
Receptors may become desensitized even though the stimulus remains present.
Word forms
- Base
- desensitize
- Past tense
- desensitized
- Past participle
- desensitized
- Present participle
- desensitizing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- desensitize
- Present continuous
- am/is/are desensitizing
- Present perfect
- have/has desensitized
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been desensitizing
- Past
- desensitized
- Past continuous
- was/were desensitizing
- Past perfect
- had desensitized
- Past perfect continuous
- had been desensitizing
- Future
- will desensitize
- Future continuous
- will be desensitizing
- Future perfect
- will have desensitized
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been desensitizing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Usually transitive: desensitizes, desensitized, desensitized, desensitizing; future will desensitize. Desensitize someone or something to a stimulus. UK spelling desensitise is an alias, not a separate entry. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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