Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
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.]
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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. -
To deprive of material mobility. [Obs.]
It is not malleable; but yet is not fluent, but stupefied.
--Bacon.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of stupefy English)
WordNet
adj. so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm; "such an enormous response was astonishing"; "an astounding achievement"; "the amount of money required was staggering"; "suffered a staggering defeat"; "the figure inside the boucle dress was stupefying" [syn: astonishing, astounding, staggering]
making physically stupid or dull or insensible; "a stupefying blow to the head"; "the stupefying effects of hemp"
shocking with surprise and consternation; "the stupefying impact of the tragedy"
Usage examples of "stupefying".
There had been gunmen and gangmen in New York for years, we knew, but this fellow seemed to be the last word, with his liquid bullets, his anesthetic shells and his stupefying gun.
He tried it on us on a small scale very successfully that night with his stupefying gun.
I have compared them with the marks on cartridges which we have picked up at the finding of Rena Taylor's body, at the garage that night of the stupefying bullet, with bullets such as were aimed at Warrington, with others, both cartridges and bullets, at various times, and the conclusion is unescapable.
Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in this series, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gun shot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body, whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadly anaesthetic bullet was fired.
Monk’s query must have delivered a profound shock, because the captive actually threw off the stupefying effects of the truth serum to a degree.
The thing functioned off a high-voltage battery, and the current from this was stepped up and interrupted until it would deliver a stupefying shock.
All things were in flux, and any nation that managed even a week’s lead over the others would have an advantage of stupefying magnitude.
It had been a stupefying period: one day facing death in a Stettin prison.
It continued, it engines bursting flame, and then its speed increased slowly, purposefully and always upward, until at last it attained a stupefying power that carried it high into the air, flames following, and out over the sea.
It had been something trivial, something that had barely registered in the few moments that had elapsed between Calazar's brief appearance inside the craft and Hunt's first glimpse of the stupefying scene that had greeted him outside just before everything went crazy.