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.
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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
The effect of this announcement was to benumb his faculties.
From Great African Travellers From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley by William Henry Giles Kingston
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
They had power to benumb every decent feeling in me.
From Blue Aloes Stories of South Africa by Cynthia Stockley
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
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
Is she some queen whose haughty eye benumbs Proud potentates; whose word can lift the sea Of shattering war, and fling red misery Across the world?...
From Etain the Beloved and Other Poems by James Henry Cousins
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
Britta, a healing practitioner, her entrepreneur husband, Richard, and their young daughter are part of this benumbed society.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2019
A benumbed melancholy throbs through both the novel and film, which plays like a lampoon lamentation for the Southern California utopia that might have been.
From New York Times ● Sep. 26, 2014
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
A superabundance of news has the benumbing effect of mob rule on the senses.
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
