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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stupefy

Stupefy \Stu"pe*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stupefied; p. pr. & vb. n. Stupefying.] [F. stup['e]fier, fr. L. stupere to be stupefied + ficare (in comp.) to make, akin to facere. See Stupid, Fact, and cf. Stupefacient.] [Written also stupify, especially in England.]

  1. To make stupid; to make dull; to blunt the faculty of perception or understanding in; to deprive of sensibility; to make torpid.

    The fumes of drink discompose and stupefy the brain.
    --South.

  2. To deprive of material mobility. [Obs.]

    It is not malleable; but yet is not fluent, but stupefied.
    --Bacon.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
stupefy

early 15c., from Latin stupefacere "make stupid or senseless, benumb, stun," from stupere "be stunned" (see stupid) + facere "to make" (see factitious).

Wiktionary
stupefy

vb. To dull the senses or capacity to think thereby reduce responsiveness; to dazzle.

WordNet
stupefy
  1. v. make dull or stupid or muddle with drunkenness or infatuation [syn: besot]

  2. be a mystery or bewildering to; "This beats me!"; "Got me--I don't know the answer!"; "a vexing problem"; "This question really stuck me" [syn: perplex, vex, stick, get, puzzle, mystify, baffle, beat, pose, bewilder, flummox, nonplus, gravel, amaze, dumbfound]

  3. make senseless or dizzy by or as if by a blow; "stun fish" [syn: stun]

  4. [also: stupefied]

Usage examples of "stupefy".

The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrighted, starting up from sleeping,--a funereal swarming.

Quite unintentionally, he himself had been partly the cause of the murder, but only partly, and when he learned that he had given a pretext to the murderers, he became anguished, stupefied, began imagining things, went quite off his head, and convinced himself that he was the murderer!

From all these instances it is clear that Christ, when He willed, changed the minds of men by His Divine power, not only by the bestowal of righteousness and the infusion of wisdom, which pertains to the end of miracles, but also by outwardly drawing men to Himself, or by terrifying or stupefying them, which pertains to the miraculous itself.

Fogg and Sir Francis stood erect, the Parsee bowed his head, and Passepartout was, no doubt, scarcely less stupefied.

The faint hum of the insect, the intermittent murmur of the guitar, the mellow complainings of the pigeons, the prolonged purr of the white cat, the contented clucking of the hens--all these noises mingled together to form a faint, drowsy bourdon, prolonged, stupefying, suggestive of an infinite quiet, of a calm, complacent life, centuries old, lapsing gradually to its end under the gorgeous loneliness of a cloudless, pale blue sky and the steady fire of an interminable sun.

Valentine, mollified by the compliment, soon recovered her birdlike gayety, and such free and easy conversation ensued between the trio that Mathieu felt both stupefied and embarrassed.

But the more characteristic mark of this mature senility was a wonderful loss of muscular strength, an almost complete disappearance of will, energy, and power of action, so that she now spent whole days, idle, stupefied, without courage even to raise a finger.

But Mathieu, stupefied at finding her so well informed, and at a loss to understand why she spoke to him of that sorry affair after the lapse of so many years, could only make a gesture by which he betrayed both his surprise and his anxiety.

And towards midnight, while they were chatting together in undertones, they were suddenly stupefied at hearing Seraphine raise her voice, after preserving silence for three hours.

Mathieu was equally stupefied and delighted, and on noticing the surprise occasioned by the arrival of the two big brothers from Paris, he proceeded to explain the position.

This terrible blow, so entirely unexpected, stupefied the duke for a moment.

The tribunal, after a short deliberation, decided that it would not admit this testimony which had so excited the audience, and stupefied Maurice and Abbe Midon.

She is yoga-cross-legged, and she stares, with a look of stupefied wonder, at the garden and at the dawn breaking through wood-smoke haze and the thin gray-brown band of dust and pollution that hangs above the city of Lusaka.

Then he, gazed aghast, stupefied with amazement, at the body, twitching convulsively at first and then lying prone and motionless.

Wurde gave the gun a final crank, and, though he was at a loss to explain the workings of the wonderful device, he stood grimly as the arms flailed and the entire gun shot away in the direction of the stupefied trolls.