benumb
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of the people….
From Forbes ● Aug. 26, 2014
Their effect was to benumb every faculty, and to prostrate every sense; and, as one thus afflicted, sat poor Fanny Rutherford in a chair, at the window of her shabby apartment.
From Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 14 by Various
The world's forces began to benumb and appall him.
From The Light of the Star A Novel by Hamlin Garland
There are some feelings time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake.
From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by John Bartlett
And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
From Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold by Matthew Arnold
And a humble suggestion for the icy, northwesterly breeze that so often benumbs New York City.
From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2013
After offering some Soviet advance brass a dinner at his canonry, complete with vintage port, he benumbs them with a conducted tour of his cathedral.
From Time Magazine Archive
From the arctics and antarctics which they explore, they bring a refrigeration that benumbs artistic sensibilities.
From Time Magazine Archive
What assaults the eye often benumbs the brain, but now all the networks are doing the same.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sloth benumbs and enervates the mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our power.
From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Victor Cousin
Its importance may have been underestimated by a benumbed Supreme Court press, understandably focused on what is likely to be the Court’s decision.
From Slate ● Dec. 19, 2022
As friends and neighbors watch in silent awe, confused, benumbed, the father lowers the launcher and stage-growls the absolutely unnecessary: “It’s a boy.”
From Washington Post ● May 13, 2021
In the course of her Zoom interview with the Guardian, she also claims to feel like one of the characters in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, benumbed by a constant stream of media stimulation.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 6, 2020
You wonder if the sudden exposure to so much warmth and acceptance has sent her into shock, or if any feeling has even managed to penetrate her benumbed state.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2018
He continued to swim in Dumbledore’s wake, the tips of his benumbed fingers brushing the rough, wet rock.
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
I attended and can assure you that, contrary to the glamorously edited videos in the show, they were malfunctioning, formless, benumbing ordeals.
From The New Yorker ● May 22, 2017
Tate Modern's current show Exposed, on surveillance photography, feels intellectually threadbare and aesthetically benumbing.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 9, 2010
A distillation had been made of the benumbing repetition of bad news in order to show that one should not be numbed.
From Time Magazine Archive
Instead of that benumbing, step-by-step chronology to which so many earnest biographers undiscriminatingly consign everything from laundry bills to emotional crises, Edel weaves back and forth in time and subject like a novelist.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Clinic had prepared me for it, benumbing my sense of shame, and besides, I was desperate for money.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
