Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Stupefy   Listen
Stupefy

verb
(past & past part. stupefied; pres. part. stupefying)  (Written also stupify, especially in England)
1.
Make dull or stupid or muddle with drunkenness or infatuation.  Synonym: besot.
2.
Be a mystery or bewildering to.  Synonyms: amaze, baffle, beat, bewilder, dumbfound, flummox, get, gravel, mystify, nonplus, perplex, pose, puzzle, stick, vex.  "Got me--I don't know the answer!" , "A vexing problem" , "This question really stuck me"
3.
Make senseless or dizzy by or as if by a blow.  Synonym: stun.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Stupefy" Quotes from Famous Books



... asset in carrying on the fur trade. The object was to please the red man, not to stupefy him to such an extent that he could be swindled. With the growth of the great companies and the influx of numbers of private traders there were many bidders for each Indian's furs. Complaint was continual that the British traders about the Lake of ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... reminding him that no one, not even his father, knew more, or, indeed, as much as he did, of her secret, and bidding him not betray her; this postscript, however, remained at first unnoticed: there was enough in the letter itself to bewilder and stupefy its unfortunate reader. He went over it again and again, trying, trying to understand it; to make certain that there was not some strange mistake, some other meaning in it than that which first appeared. But no; it was distinct enough, though the writing was strangely unsteady, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... a criminal, a quantity of frankincense in a cup of wine was given to him to stupefy him and render him insensible to pain. The compassionate ladies of Jerusalem generally provided this draught at their own cost. This custom was in obedience to Prov. xxxi. 6, "Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine ...
— Hebrew Literature

... No word have I Such blindness must amaze! must stupefy! Nay, this is frenzy! I cannot conceive A mind so strange! Mine ears cannot believe That one who loved thee—yet, who would not love A face that must the great immortals move?— Blessed by thy heart!—Thy sweetest lips to taste!— ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... began to fight with Karna, aided by his illusion and displaying the greatest activity. Showers of shafts fell from an invisible source from the welkin. Then Bhimasena's son, endued with great prowess of illusion, O foremost of the Kurus, assumed a fierce form, aided by those powers, began to stupefy the Kauravas, O Bharata! The valiant Rakshasa, assuming many fierce and grim heads, began to devour the celestial weapons of the Suta's son. Soon again, the gigantic Rakshasa, with a hundred wounds on his body ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... like her. She doth think she has Strange ling'ring poisons. I do know her spirit, And will not trust one of her malice with A drug of such damn'd nature. Those she has Will stupefy and dull the sense a while, Which first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterward up higher; but there is No danger in what show of death it makes, More than the locking-up the spirits a time, To be more fresh, reviving. She ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... heart! To stupefy oneself with other wines, is brutal; but to raise oneself to the seventh heaven with thee, is quite ethereal. The soul appears to spurn the body, and take a transient flight without its dull associate—the—the—broke down, by Jupiter! All I meant to say was, that champagne ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... up all the avenues by which the life of your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned; I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. You are not resigned; you are only trying to stupefy yourself." ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... liquefy petroleum rarefy skeleton telescope tragedy gayety lineal renegade secretary deprecate execrate implement maleable promenade recreate stupefy tenement vegetate ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... galling chain on the limbs, cut off the supply of moral and intellectual vitality, refused appropriate occupation, baffled hope, eclipsed knowledge, and kept up a vile inquisitorial process to goad the crushed heart, sap the heroic will, and stupefy or alienate the mental faculties; dawn ushered in the twilight of a mausoleum, noon fell dimly on paralyzed manhood, night ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... happiness never consists in abstaining from work and getting satisfaction therefrom. This would mean everyone's desiring the happiness of others for himself, and what everyone wished for no one would have. Such a life would be an idle not an active life, and would stupefy all the powers of life; and everyone ought to know that without activity of life there can be no happiness of life, and that rest from this activity should be only for the sake of recreation, that one may return with more vigor ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... at Bononia, had pushed forwards with some light infantry. The captive general, uncertain of his life or death, was hastily thrown upon a horse, and conducted to the presence of Julian; who kindly raised him from the ground, and dispelled the terror and amazement which seemed to stupefy his faculties. But Lucilian had no sooner recovered his spirits, than he betrayed his want of discretion, by presuming to admonish his conqueror that he had rashly ventured, with a handful of men, to expose his person in the midst of his enemies. "Reserve for your master ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... drink yourself then, to be able all alone by yourself to dumbfound and stupefy the city so ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... tendencies. But man is not simply a specimen of the race, and for that reason this sort of education is far from being simple in its results. Men so vary from one another, that numberless methods have to be invented to repress, stupefy, and extinguish individual thought. And one never arrives at it then but in part, a fact which is continually deranging everything. At each moment, by some fissure, some interior force of initiative is making a violent ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... know how he manages to bear it. I was obliged to stupefy him with opium in the night—a thing I hate to do with a nervous patient; but I had to stop ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... adequate, expression is so too, and if a man will only grow sensitive to the various solicitations which anything monstrous combines, he will thereby perceive its monstrosity. Let him but enact his sensations, let him pause to make explicit the confused hints that threaten to stupefy him; he will find that he can follow out each of them only by rejecting and forgetting the others. To free his imagination in any direction he must disengage it from the contrary intent, and so he must either purify his object or leave it a mass of confused promptings. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... his life Kirk knew what fear really meant. All that he had experienced till now had, he saw, been a mild apprehension, not worthy of a stronger name. His flesh crawled with the thoughts which rose in his mind like black bubbles in a pond. There were moments when the temptation to stupefy himself ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... of all. I cannot bear it. I won't believe it. She may not ask for me again, and may quite forget me; but I'm sure, to the very last, if the medicines don't stupefy her, she will look round for the squire and her children. For poor Osborne most of all; because ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... though it rarely does, that a sluggish child desires to stagnate in idleness, you must not give way to this tendency, which might stupefy him entirely, but you must apply some stimulus to wake him. You must understand that is no question of applying force, but of arousing some appetite which leads to action, and such an appetite, carefully selected on the lines laid down by nature, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... holds nothing but spiders, packed close, but not yet sealed up. These spiders, be it remembered, are not dead. By some strange craft, the wasp knows exactly where to pierce them with her sting, so as to stupefy, but not to kill, just as the sand-wasps of our banks at home stupefy the large weevils which they store in their burrows as food ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... until they get their fingers on the fontanelle, (the Professor will tell you what this means,—he says the one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... we have absolutely nothing in the present day to take its place. On the contrary, air-tight stoves and air-tight furnaces have supplemented the cheerful blaze of the fireplace, and in lieu of fresh air, a great amount of poisonous gases are emitted, which stupefy and promote disease. Especially is this the case where the fuel used is any of the coals, instead of wood. The most deleterious of coals is the anthracite. Its heat is scorching and drying beyond any other, and the gases are more subtle and pernicious, excepting, possibly, ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... Mansoul, because, as I said, his words did shake the whole town; they were like the rattling thunder, and also like thunder-claps. Since, therefore, the giant could not make him wholly his own, what doth he do but studies all that he could to debauch the old gentleman, and by debauchery to stupefy his mind, and more harden his heart in the ways of vanity. And as he attempted, so he accomplished his design: he debauched the man, and by little and little so drew him into sin and wickedness, that at last he was not only debauched, as at first, and so by consequence defiled, but was almost ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... upon getting out of men and women an increasing amount of the powers with which they are born and which bad surroundings at the start blunt or stupefy. This is what all systems of education try to do, but the result of all systems of education depends upon the material that comes to the educator. Opening the mind of the child, that is the delicate ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... benumb, obtund, stupefy, deaden, hebetate; sully, tarnish, obscure, dim, bedim; depress, sadden, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... uncritical observation of the external and surprising in nature, natural science when coming forward as a mystical philosophy of nature, instead of enlightening and stimulating, could only still more stupefy and paralyze; and in presence of such a method it was better to rest satisfied with the platitude which Cicero delivers as Socratic wisdom, that the investigation of nature either seeks after things which nobody ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... cathartics, laxatives, diaphoretics, cholagogues and tonics, all of which, after temporary stimulation, leave the organs in a more weakened and the system in a more poisoned condition. If brain and nerves are irritated and aching, sedatives and hypnotics are given to stupefy them into insensibility. If the heart action is weak and irregular, it is whipped up by poisonous stimulants; if too fast, it is checked and paralyzed by ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... he would have to adopt made him wince, for he knew the platitudes they entailed; and in preference he thought of the paradoxes with which he would stupefy the House, the daring and originality he would show in introducing subjects that, till then, no one had dared to touch upon. With the politics of his party he had little intention of concerning himself, for his projects were to make for himself a reputation as an orator, and having confirmed ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... one, the "Hotel de Belle Vue," at the Hague, as comfortable, as handsome, as cheerful as any I ever took mine ease in. And the Bavarian beer, my dear friend, how good and brisk and light it is! Take another glass—it refreshes and does not stupefy—and then we will sally out, and see the town and the park ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... submitted without a murmur. My master, whose name was M. Ducommon, was a young man of a very violent and boorish character, who contrived in a short time to tarnish all the amiable qualities of my childhood, to stupefy a disposition naturally sprightly, and reduce my feelings, as well as my condition, to an absolute state of servitude. I forgot my Latin, history, and antiquities; I could hardly recollect whether such people as Romans ever existed. When I visited my father, he no longer beheld his idol, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... secretion of urine, to which it imparts a violet hue. It also promotes perspiration, and stimulates the bronchial mucous membrane. From eight to twenty drops may be given as a dose to produce these effects; but an immoderate dose will purge, or intoxicate, and stupefy, causing strangury, and congestion ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... Strychnine striknino. Stubborn obstinega. Stubbornness obstinegeco. Stucco stukajxo. Stud butono. Student studento. Studio studcxambro. Studious lernema. Study lerni, studi. Stuff (material) sxtofo. Stuff plenigi. Stumble faleti. Stump trunkrestajxo. Stun duonesvenigi. Stupefy malspritigi. Stupefaction mirego. Stupendous mireginda. Stupid malsprita. Stupidity malspriteco. Stupor letargio. Sturdy harda. Sturgeon sturgo, huzo. Stutter balbuti. Stye (pig) porkejo. Style stilo. Style (fashion) fasono. Stylish stila. Subaltern ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... masses too, press both mind and body into service. Other peoples, if they think at all, think how to avoid work; the Parisians think incessantly, always, how to provide themselves with more to do. Other peoples drink to stupefy themselves lest peradventure in a leisure moment they might be seized of a thought; Parisians drink to stimulate themselves, to try to think more rapidly, to attract ideas that might not enter and engage a sober and therefore ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... let us see after some dinner.' I thought that he wanted to get drunk, but I was wrong. We dined very quietly at a restaurant where you have sometimes been with him. I had ordered some Beaune to stupefy Rodolphe a bit. 'This was Mimi's favorite wine,' said he, 'we have often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... climate. December and January will bring their frosts and snows without asking our permission; easterly or nor'-easterly winds will prevail in the spring months; March will bluster, April will weep; May will smile through her tears by day and freeze us with her frosts at night, and July will stupefy us with thunderstorms, and August scorch us with heat one day and drench us to the skin ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... platter. Then he took the whale's jaw, and snapped it like a reed; he filled his pipe and burned the tobacco to ashes in one inhalation; when his hosts closed the wigwam and smoked vigorously, intending to foul the air and stupefy him, he enjoyed it, while they grew sick; so they whispered to each other, "This is a mighty magician, and we must try his powers ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner



Words linked to "Stupefy" :   immobilize, stump, befuddle, fuddle, confuse, throw, immobilise, riddle, desensitize, mix up, amaze, fox, confound, discombobulate, bedevil, escape, desensitise, stupefaction, elude



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org