How to Use desensitize in a Sentence

desensitize

verb
Definition of desensitizenext
  • The shot will help to desensitize the nerve.
  • Like the shots, the pills desensitize the body to the pollen.
    — Lynne Terry, OregonLive.com, 26 June 2017
  • Sometimes the wisest are the youngest in our lives, the ones who haven’t yet been desensitized to the atrocities of our world.
    — Katie Reilly, Time, 28 May 2018
  • Four days in Ivrea hadn’t desensitized me to the unusualness of any of it.
    — Jon Mooallem Andrea Frazzetta, New York Times, 17 Mar. 2023
  • A few minutes will desensitize the skin for hours of relief.
    — Joe Graedon, M.s., and Teresa Graedon, Houston Chronicle, 23 June 2018
  • The other half might care, but has been so desensitized in the past 28 years, its interest in/defense of Rose is mild at best.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 3 Aug. 2017
  • Some of the trainers at least wanted to desensitize Tilikum in case someone fell in.
    — Tim Zimmermann, Outside Online, 30 July 2010
  • So has the country been desensitized to mass shootings?
    — Christopher Kuhagen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 Feb. 2020
  • Many deaf-blind people can’t read Braille with gloves on because their hands are desensitized.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 28 Apr. 2020
  • Meth users also may be desensitized to pain, Price said, so using a Taser may not affect them.
    — Alexis Stevens, The Seattle Times, 20 Nov. 2018
  • Sue from Pleasanton offered some tips on desensitizing Rudy to the camo.
    — Joan Morris, The Mercury News, 30 Jan. 2017
  • The effect, to a child who is not desensitized enough, (sadly) can be detrimental.
    — Curtis Silver, WIRED, 4 Sep. 2012
  • As people get desensitized to it, kids are freaking out.
    — Yvonne Abraham, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Mar. 2018
  • Once a week, a massage therapist dug into her scars, helping to desensitize the tissue and push the muscle and skin apart.
    — Grayson Haver Currin, Outside Online, 27 Sep. 2019
  • For fear, try to desensitize your pup to trigger noises by playing movies with the sounds of thunderstorms or fireworks.
    — Hannah Harper, Health.com, 15 Apr. 2020
  • Put the cream on their skin before the injection, following your health care provider's instructions, to desensitize the area.
    — Rachel Rabkin Peachman, Parents, 21 Sep. 2023
  • The whole point of these movies is to desensitize us to the brutality, and to spend a couple hundred million dollars playing with Hasbro’s toys for us.
    — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 7 June 2023
  • This helps desensitize dogs to having their paws handled.
    — Zoe Malin, NBC News, 3 Mar. 2021
  • The goal of exposure is to desensitize you to these things and also to give you practice riding out your anxious feelings, rather than avoiding them.
    — Kate Julian, The Atlantic, 14 Apr. 2020
  • Therefore, the injection should have desensitized the rat’s whole body equally.
    — Jonathon Keats, Discover Magazine, 11 May 2018
  • As well as becoming desensitized to Trump, there's also a sense that Britain is engulfed in so much chaos of its own that the visiting president was more of a sideshow.
    — NBC News, 6 June 2019
  • In many cases, desensitizing toothpaste (which works to block transmission of sensation from your tooth’s surface to the nerve) can help, the ADA says.
    — Korin Miller, SELF, 18 Apr. 2018
  • People seemed to cope in one of two ways: turning away from the problem or overthinking it and becoming desensitized.
    — Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, azcentral, 8 June 2018
  • In short: We’re becoming desensitized to the devastation that the climate crisis is causing, which isn’t good because the worst is still to come.
    — Mekita Rivas, refinery29.com, 6 Jan. 2020
  • The danger for me was always becoming desensitized to that.
    — Laura Barcella, Longreads, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Why the researchers did this study Three years ago the FDA approved a protein powder taken over a period of months to desensitize those with peanut allergies.
    — The Indianapolis Star, 16 June 2023
  • Before putting something gross directly on a patient's skin, maybe doctors could put the substance on a rubber hand to desensitize the patient.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 11 Dec. 2015
  • Both types of stories can obscure and desensitize us to the disturbing violence.
    — Callum Borchers, Washington Post, 16 Feb. 2018
  • One hypothesis is that officers got used to the cameras and became desensitized to them.
    — Author: Amanda Ripley, Alaska Dispatch News, 20 Oct. 2017
  • But people habituate to, and then desensitize to, doom overuse.
    — Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 31 July 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'desensitize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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