SENSATIONAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sensational mean? 

• SENSATIONAL (adjective)
  The adjective SENSATIONAL has 3 senses:

1. causing intense interest, curiosity, or emotion

2. commanding attention

3. relating to or concerned in sensation

  Familiarity information: SENSATIONAL used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SENSATIONAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing intense interest, curiosity, or emotion

Similar:

lurid; shocking (glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism)

scandalmongering; sensationalistic; yellow (typical of tabloids)

screaming (resembling a scream in effect)

Attribute:

sensationalism (subject matter that is calculated to excite and please vulgar tastes)

Antonym:

unsensational (not of such character as to arouse intense interest, curiosity, or emotional reaction)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Commanding attention

Synonyms:

arresting; sensational; stunning

Context example:

a stunning performance

Similar:

impressive (making a strong or vivid impression)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Relating to or concerned in sensation

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

sensational; sensory

Context example:

sensory organs

Pertainym:

sensation (an unelaborated elementary awareness of stimulation)

 Context examples 

But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They are trash, and will soon be worse trash if I go on, for each is more sensational than the last.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Your career is likely to bring you sensational news at the December 11 full moon in Gemini, at 20 degrees.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Heavy-game shots liked to be in a position to cap the tales of their rivals, and journalists were not averse from sensational coups, even when imagination had to aid fact in the process.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he must either sacrifice details which are essential to his statement and so give a false impression of the problem, or he must use matter which chance, and not choice, has provided him with.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There is also a sensational aspect on the same day, November 24, and it is a beauty.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

“Dear me,” said he, “it was only this moment at breakfast that I was saying to my friend, Dr. Watson, that sensational cases had disappeared out of our papers.”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Jo wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation, but going to the other extreme, as is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)