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

Men benumb themselves in work, in pleasure, in the foolery of morality, as it is termed.

From Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine by Berthold Auerbach

Put a tight bandage on the limb above the scar of the old wound to benumb the pained tendon, however long the wound may have been healed.

From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin

The older a man is, within limits of course, the more interesting he should be, and is, unless he has weakly allowed age to benumb him before his time.

From The Record of Nicholas Freydon An Autobiography by A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

It was during this period that Adah met with one of those sorrows which benumb the sensitive feminine heart.

From The House An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice by Eugene Field

And a humble suggestion for the icy, northwesterly breeze that so often benumbs New York City.

From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2013

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

Vain men, whom hunger pinches, cold benumbs, and poverty emaciates.

From Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian by Anonymous

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

She walked out of the tall gate benumbed.

From "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson

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

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

Only the thrill is cheap, and the regret benumbing, the massive judgmental power of the people reduced to a wheeze and a yawn.

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