Adjective

(en adjective)

Perceptible by the senses.

* Arbuthnot

Air is sensible to the touch by its motion.

* 1778 , William Lewis, The New Dispensatory (page 91)

The sensible qualities of argentina promise no great virtue of this kind; for to the taste it discovers only a slight roughishness, from whence it may be presumed to be entitled to a place only among the milder corroborants.

* 1902 , William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience , Folio Society 2008, page 45:

It has been vouchsafed, for example, to very few Christian believers to have had a sensible vision of their Saviour.

Easily perceived; appreciable.

* Sir W. Temple

The disgrace was more sensible than the pain.

* Adam Smith

The discovery of the mines of America does not seem to have had any very sensible effect upon the prices of things in England.

(archaic) Able to feel or perceive.

* Shakespeare

Would your cambric were sensible as your finger.

(archaic) Liable to external impression; easily affected; sensitive.

a sensible thermometer

* Shakespeare

with affection wondrous sensible

Of or pertaining to the senses; sensory.

(archaic) Cognizant; having the perception of something; aware of something.

* John Locke

He cannot think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it.

* Addison

They are now sensible it would have been better to comply than to refuse.

Acting with or showing good sense; able to make good judgements based on reason.

* 2005 , .

They ask questions of someone who thinks he's got something sensible to say on some matter when actually he hasn't.

Characterized more by usefulness or practicality than by fashionableness, especially of clothing.

* 1999 , Neil Gaiman, Stardust (2001 Perennial Edition), page 8,

They would walk, on fair evenings, around the village, and discuss the theory of crop rotation, and the weather, and other such sensible matters.

Adjective

(-)

Existing in act or reality, not just potentially; really acted or acting; occurring in fact.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)

, volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution , passage=They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.}}

Factual, real, not just apparent or even false.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.}}

(dated) In action at the time being; now existing; current.

(obsolete) Active, not passive.

* Shakespeare

her walking and other actual performances.

* Jeremy Taylor

Let your holy and pious intention be actual ; that is given to God.

Used to emphasise a noun or verb, whether something is real or metaphorical.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}