benumb

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

Hence, if we could benumb the surface, certain of the lesser operations might be undergone without great inconvenience.

From A Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene For Educational Institutions and General Readers by Joseph Chrisman Hutchison

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

But she replied: "Only in earlier years–but long ago it ceased to be so–did they make my eye-sockets burn and benumb my brain."

From Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. II A Biography by Jean Paul

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

What assaults the eye often benumbs the brain, but now all the networks are doing the same.

From Time Magazine Archive

From the arctics and antarctics which they explore, they bring a refrigeration that benumbs artistic sensibilities.

From Time Magazine Archive

The car reared upward—higher and higher it climbed to the accompaniment of the terrible crunching grind that proclaims undirected power and benumbs the brain with the horrid possibilities of energy uncontrolled.

From The Promise A Tale of the Great Northwest by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx

Steinem spoke explicitly about pushing the women’s movement beyond its initial concerns—essentially, the benumbed, unfulfilled flourishing of white middle-class housewives like her own mother.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026

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

No longer feeling any cold in his legs and arms nor on his face, he thought that the frost had benumbed him.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

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 very useful word is 'KOMING' When lack of data gets benumbing.

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