Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Numb or torpid, either physically or morally: as, benumbed limbs; benumbed faith.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Made torpid; numbed; stupefied; deadened.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Simple past tense and past participle of
benumb . - adjective Lacking
sensation ;numb - adjective Lacking
interest ;dulled
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having lost or been caused to lose interest because of overexposure
- adjective lacking sensation
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Nor are narcotics -- from narkosis, Greek for "benumbed" -- necessarily all about nodding.
Chicago Reader 2010
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King responded to the salute from Obama with a kind of benumbed indifference, although later in the show he expressed oddly unctuous gratitude to fellow TV talker "Dr. Phil" McGraw, who popped into the studio for a folksy bye-bye.
A star-studded, but still somewhat muted, farewell for 'Larry King Live' Tom Shales 2010
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She wandered through the house and around the backyard in a benumbed state of shock.
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For the most part, we are benumbed, befuddled or afraid.
Judith Acosta: The Great American Trance Judith Acosta 2011
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If it doesn't, we wind up like Fitzgerald, lost in a lost city, besotted by booze and benumbed by grief.
Judith Acosta: The Necessary Death of Romance Judith Acosta 2011
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And for a country that was born of faith and the fearlessness of millions of people crawling, paddling and begging their ways here so they could be free to now be a country paralyzed by magical thinking and benumbed with viral fear is heartbreaking.
Judith Acosta: How Marketers Capitalize On Your Fear: Confessions Of An Ex-Ad-Woman Judith Acosta 2011
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For the most part, we are benumbed, befuddled or afraid.
Judith Acosta: The Great American Trance Judith Acosta 2011
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Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies.
CHAPTER I 2010
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Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy senses no longer took note of changing pitch and intensity.
The Hunger Cry 2010
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And for a country that was born of faith and the fearlessness of millions of people crawling, paddling and begging their ways here so they could be free to now be a country paralyzed by magical thinking and benumbed with viral fear is heartbreaking.
Judith Acosta: How Marketers Capitalize On Your Fear: Confessions Of An Ex-Ad-Woman Judith Acosta 2011
mollusque commented on the word benumbed
. . . my mouth stayed mute and benumbed until I realized I could feel my tongue—feel it in the phantom form of the kind of air bladder that might help a fish with his respiration problems, but was useless to me.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 245
June 13, 2009