Crossword clues for stultify
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stultify \Stul"ti*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stultified; p. pr. & vb. n. Stultifying.] [L. stultus foolish + -fy.]
To make foolish; to make a fool of; as, to stultify one by imposition; to stultify one's self by silly reasoning or conduct.
--Burke.-
To regard as a fool, or as foolish. [R.]
The modern sciolist stultifies all understanding but his own, and that which he conceives like his own.
--Hazlitt. (Law) To allege or prove to be of unsound mind, so that the performance of some act may be avoided.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1766, "allege to be of unsound mind" (legal term), from Late Latin stultificare "turn into foolishness," from Latin stultus "foolish" (literally "uneducated, unmovable," from PIE root *stel- "to put, stand") + root of facere "to make" (see factitious). The first element is cognate with Latin stolidus "slow, dull, obtuse" (see stolid). Meaning "cause to appear foolish or absurd" is from 1809. Hence stultiloquy "foolish talk, silly babbling" (1650s). Related: Stultified; stultifying.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To prove to be of unsound mind or demonstrate someone's incompetence. 2 To cause to appear foolish. 3 To deprive of strength or efficacy; make useless or worthless.
WordNet
v. prove to be of unsound mind or demonstrate someone's incompetence; "nobody is legally allowed to stultify himself"
cause to appear foolish; "He stultified himself by contradicting himself and being inconsistent"
deprive of strength or efficiency; make useless or worthless; "This measure crippled our efforts"; "Their behavior stultified the boss's hard work" [syn: cripple]
[also: stultified]
Usage examples of "stultify".
All over the world socialists are breaking away from the stultifying influence of the outworn determinism.
SS killer hauled before a court and in every way possible to stultify the course of justice in West Germany when it operates against a former Karnerad, to see that former SS men established themselves in commerce and industry in time to take advantage of the economic miracle that has rebuilt the country since 1945, and finally to propagandize the German people to the viewpoint that the SS killers were in fact none other than ordinary patriotic soldiers doing their duty to the Fatherland, and in no way deserving of the persecution to which FOREWORD xi justice and conscience have ineffectually subjected them.
Aquinas, scholasticism was ossifying, becoming stultified and rigid in the universities, as scholars fought over the minutiae of what he and the other medieval masters had really meant.
Whiggery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing lie, the ballot.
It is the lovely land where the lemon trees grow, multiplied far beyond the utmost reaches of your stultified Europocentric imaginations.
But more often than not, a detailed outline of the plot stultifies the story.
If he saw something truly superb that excited his acquisitional fever, even the stultifying atmosphere would not be able to sap his energy.
Mind reading would stultify the development of any race, and therefore this one is in the fellahin stage.
Most of them were stultifying horse operas-rural colonial melodramas-or sentimentalized war stories.
They'd stuck him with a needleful of cold darkness, and he'd woken up in this stultifying cubicle, trussed to a chair and aching, unable to speak.
The man is an addict, and his career is stultified, but he has conceived the perfect unit, and believes my brother can implement it.
And Goblin, Goblin staring at the screen, stultified by the patterns he must have been perceiving, Goblin quiet for all his struggle to understand why we were so stricken and so quiet.
Indeed the good deeds he did before he fell into sin have been all deadened and stultified and rendered null and void by the repeated sinning.
But for as much as the good deeds that men do while they are in a state of grace are all stultified by sin ensuing.
So they were trying to go west, Gloucester Road way, despite the opposition (frivolous and treacherous) of contrary traffic and stultified red signals.