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Sensitive plant   /sˈɛnsətɪv plænt/   Listen
adjective
Sensitive  adj.  
1.
Having sense of feeling; possessing or exhibiting the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects; as, a sensitive soul.
2.
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."
3.
(a)
(Mech.) Having a capacity of being easily affected or moved; as, a sensitive thermometer; sensitive scales.
(b)
(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.
4.
Serving to affect the sense; sensible. (R.) "A sensitive love of some sensitive objects."
5.
Of or pertaining to sensation; depending on sensation; as, sensitive motions; sensitive muscular motions excited by irritation.
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 (Aeschynomene hispida), with sensitive foliage.
Sensitive paper, paper prepared for photographic purpose by being rendered sensitive to the effect of light.
Sensitive plant. (Bot.)
(a)
A leguminous plant (Mimosa pudica, or Mimosa sensitiva, and other allied species), the leaves of which close at the slightest touch.
(b)
Any plant showing motions after irritation, as the sensitive brier (Schrankia) of the Southern States, two common American species of Cassia (Cassia nictitans, and Cassia Chamaecrista), a kind of sorrel (Oxalis sensitiva), etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sensitive plant" Quotes from Famous Books



... great sense into your circle. This curious fascination has attracted round your memory a feeble folk of commentators, biographers, anecdotists, and others of the tribe. They swarm round you like carrion-flies round a sensitive plant, like night-birds bewildered by the sun. Men of sense and taste have written on you, indeed; but your weaker admirers are now disputing as to whether it was your heart, or a less dignified and most troublesome organ, which escaped the flames of the funeral pyre. These biographers ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... none of my business, but do you know what a sensitive plant you have to deal with in there? She must not have another shock like that mysterious one ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... his eyes, his most wonderful feature, impressed me more than anything else; for one was black and the other dark blue. All other strange and extranatural things in nature, of which I had personal knowledge, as, for instance, mushrooms growing in rings, and the shrinking of the sensitive plant when touched, and Will-o'-the-wisps, and crowing hens, and the murderous attack of social birds and beasts on one of their fellows, seemed less strange and wonderful than the fact that this man's eyes did not correspond, but ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... that many other plants will do this, but that is a mistake. Many flowers and leaves close at night and open in the day-time, but very few indeed exhibit the peculiar action of the sensitive plant in this respect. That plant will open at night if you bring a bright light into the room where it is growing, and it will close its leaves if the room is made dark in ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... St. Mary's displayed a very charming appearance, of flowers and verdure: their more elevated borders were varied with beds of violets, lupines, and amaryllis; and with a new and beautiful species of sensitive plant. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the "Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the "Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new lyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "Sensitive Plant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate Italian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their diverse character, ranging ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... originated less in pride and want of confidence in his friends, than in a certain morbid feeling of delicacy, and a peculiar diffidence, that he was sensible of, but wanted energy to overcome. His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind. And, upon the whole, our intimacy was rather a mutual predilection ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte



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