unsense
English
editEtymology 1
editFrom un- (“absence of, lack of”) + sense.
Noun
editunsense (uncountable)
- Lack or absence of sense; senselessness; nonsense.
- 1990, Pat Bigelow, The conning, the cunning of being:
- It is a matter of pressing to the threshold of sense, where unsense is simply the nascent becoming-sense of sense […]
- 2009, Nancy Diekelmann, John Diekelmann, Schooling Learning Teaching:
- The capacity to receive and be disposed to (be affected by) sense turns on how a given particular time calls for what makes “unsense, unsense and no-longer-sense” […]
- 2010, Jones Irwin, Derrida and the Writing of the Body:
- Mary-Ann Caws seeks to explicate the term as follows: 'forcene/for-sene - unsensed by genius but not senseless; for unsense has in it the peculiar echo of an incense. . .something is consecrated here. . .sense is not simply lost... it is gravely undone […]
Etymology 2
editFrom un- (“reversal, removal”) + sense. Distant cognate with German entsinnen (“to reflect”).
Verb
editunsense (third-person singular simple present unsenses, present participle unsensing, simple past and past participle unsensed)
- (transitive) To remove or deprive of the senses; cause to be insensible.