stultify
/ˈstʌltɪfʌɪ
/verb (stultifies, stultifying, stultified) [with object]
1 (usually as adjective stultifying) Cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine: the stultifying conformity of provincial life...
- There is an appalling and stultifying conformism in Australian politico-intellectual life, such that publications which do not conform are condemned and vilified.
- For many of us, such a subdued, small town, near communitarian environment would feel repressive, stultifying.
- They found it intellectually stultifying and conformist, enslaved to propriety and, well, bloody boring.
Synonyms
hamper, impede, obstruct, thwart, frustrate, foil, suppress, smother, repress
bore, make bored, dull, numb, benumb, stupefy, deaden
informal bore rigid, bore stupid, bore to death
rare hebetate
2Cause (someone) to appear foolish or absurd.Like women elsewhere, African women are stultified by circumstances largely beyond their control....
- Against the Portuguese side, however, this seemed the product of facing a side as proficient in stultifying opponents as Celtic have proved in the past.
- There is nothing worse than being stultified by a script.
Derivatives
stultification
- In Nietzschean line of argumentation, democracy is tantamount to indecision, moral justification (proof of weakness), and stultification of politics, or ‘the rule of the mob.’
- Government regimentation of the socio-economic order always leads to widespread chaos, stultification and despair.
- All the vast resources of corporate America are directed toward the political and ideological stultification of the broad masses.
stultifier
- It is a field where most of the books are minefields, road maps to oblivion, mind stultifiers, or very limited in their scope.
- The stultifiers are the people from Historic Preservation and the fire department, the museum types and the Arts Council.
- Busoni claimed to despise ‘tradition’ - or at least any semblance of slavish adherence thereto - as a stultifier, yet he was himself unquestionably a staunch upholder and developer of ‘traditions’.
stultifyingly
- But this staggering turnaround in the numbers has lost sight of the fact that last year's performance was stultifyingly bad - the worst in its 200-year history.
- This recklessness led to much soul-searching and is no doubt the reason why this election night's TV coverage was stultifyingly dull and cautious.
- After a first 30 minutes of sometimes stultifyingly boring play, it was Bergamasco who lit up the match with a glorious try.
Origin
Mid 18th century: from late Latin stultificare, from Latin stultus 'foolish'.