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
Few laws have ever been passed better calculated than this to harden the heart and benumb the conscience of every man who assists in its execution.
From Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) by Julia Griffiths
But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?
From Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold by Matthew Arnold
Out of the untroubled surface rose the trunks of sickly looking and decayed trees, presenting amid the black and driving rain, a spectacle sufficient to chill and benumb the most manly heart.
From The Second War with England, Vol. 1 of 2 by Joel Tyler Headley
A great horror seemed to come upon him and benumb his body and his senses.
From Frank Merriwell Down South by Burt L. Standish
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
What assaults the eye often benumbs the brain, but now all the networks are doing the same.
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
The joy of the meeting with her brother has fled, a great depression benumbs her whole being.
From Asbe?n From the Life of a Virtuoso by Ossip Schubin
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
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
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
A superabundance of news has the benumbing effect of mob rule on the senses.
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
