'Sensation' is Latin for 'perceiving' — from 'sentire' (to feel). It gained its exciting sense in the 1700s.
A physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comes into contact with the body; a widespread reaction of interest and excitement; a person or thing that causes great public interest and excitement.
From French 'sensation' or directly from Medieval Latin 'sensātiō' (perception, feeling), from Latin 'sensus' (feeling, sense, meaning), past participle of 'sentīre' (to feel, to perceive, to sense). The PIE root is *sent- (to head for, to go, to feel one's way), which in Latin specialised toward sensory and emotional perception. The same Latin verb
'Sensational' underwent one of the most dramatic shifts in register in English. In the 1860s, 'sensation novels' were a controversial literary genre featuring lurid plots — bigamy, murder, madness — designed to produce intense physical and emotional responses in readers. Critics used 'sensational' as a condemnation. By the early twentieth century, journalists had adopted