stultify

Not for Gardiner the pietistically devotional approach that can stultify.

From New York Times ● Mar. 31, 2022

He puts the yawn into stultify, the stupefy into catatonia, stone-facedly delivering the exact same chords, licks, and nasal delivery for over three decades over a backbeat that would have lost the Boer War.

From Salon ● Jul. 11, 2012

But after a while Mr. Yeston’s tuneful feast begins to satiate and eventually stultify, and by the evening’s end it’s as if you’d eaten a whole buffet of pastry.

From New York Times ● Jul. 22, 2011

The reason is the feeling in jazz that if you print something, if you write down the notes, you will stultify the music.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 12, 2010

The main point is: Don’t stultify your creative instincts by trying to use critical training at the same time.

From Dramatic Technique by George Pierce Baker

Bureaucracy, entrenched monopolies and money-losing government-owned companies have stultified Tunisia’s economy, economists say, and it can ill afford to lose the foreign currency brought in by tuna.

From New York Times ● Jul. 3, 2023

In the last section, Elvis is stultified and oppressed, sapped of color and life, isolated in his “golden cage” at the International Hotel in Vegas.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2022

All these lessons leave me stultified; The hours in the day just drag along — I think they’ve multiplied!

From Washington Post ● Apr. 30, 2020

The stultified senators should distract themselves with dice cricket, a game beloved by indoorsy British children.

From Slate ● Jan. 23, 2020

Mather’s facts completely stultified Calef in this case.

From Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism by Allen Putnam

The setting needn’t be explicitly Norway, but the stultifying strictures of this middle-class world must be in place for Ibsen’s vision to have its detonating effect.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2026

For Jews, the stultifying fact to be faced is that antisemitism has nothing to do with Jews.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025

Because of the SSA’s stultifying culture, Dudek said, he leaned into his insubordinate streak.

From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2025

In reality, the most powerful force in the modern American city is the stultifying status quo.

From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2024

The years had passed with a stultifying sameness.

From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson