CARVIEW |
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.
Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word benumbed.
Examples
-
Nor are narcotics -- from narkosis, Greek for "benumbed" -- necessarily all about nodding.
Chicago Reader 2010
-
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
-
She wandered through the house and around the backyard in a benumbed state of shock.
-
For the most part, we are benumbed, befuddled or afraid.
Judith Acosta: The Great American Trance Judith Acosta 2011
-
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
-
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
-
For the most part, we are benumbed, befuddled or afraid.
Judith Acosta: The Great American Trance Judith Acosta 2011
-
Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies.
CHAPTER I 2010
-
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
-
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
Related Words
synonyms (91)
Words with the same meaning
- Laodicean
- Olympian
- aloof
- anesthetized
- apathetic
- asleep
- blah
- blase
- bored
- callous
- comatose
- dead
- deadened
- debilitated
- desensitized
- detached
- disinterested
- dopey
- dormant
- droopy
- drugged
- dull
- enervated
- exanimate
- heartless
- heavy
- hebetudinous
- hopeless
- impassible
- imperceptive
- impercipient
- in a stupor
- inanimate
- indifferent
- inert
- insensate
- insensible
- insensitive
- insentient
- insouciant
- jaded
- lackadaisical
- languid
- languorous
- leaden
- lethargic
- lifeless
- listless
- lumpish
- moribund
- nonchalant
- numb
- numbed
- obdurate
- obtuse
- passive
- phlegmatic
- pluckless
- pooped
- resigned
- sated
- senseless
- slack
- sleepy
- slow
- sluggish
- somnolent
- soporific
- spiritless
- spunkless
- stagnant
- stagnating
- stoic
- stultified
- stupefied
- supine
- thick-skinned
- thick-witted
- torpid
- uncaring
- unconcerned
- unfeeling
- unfelt
- uninterested
- unperceptive
- vegetable
- vegetative
- wan
- weary
- withdrawn
- world-weary
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