benumb
/bɪˈnʌm
/verb [with object] (often as adjective benumbed)
Deprive of physical or emotional feeling: a hoarse shout cut through his benumbed senses...
- Unfortunately, the audience becomes so benumbed by the endless carnage that any emotional connection to the individual players is reduced to an insulting inconsequentiality.
- Something has benumbed our consciousness against this reality.
- Those macabre photographs that benumbed the civilised world were worth a million words each.
Origin
Late 15th century: from obsolete benome, past participle of benim 'deprive', from be- (expressing removal) + Old English niman 'take'.