stone-deaf
adjective
totally deaf.
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stone-deaf
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stone deaf
stone deafTotally unable to hear, as in Poor Grandpa, in the last year he's become stone deaf. [First half of 1800s]
stone-deaf
American
[stohn-def]
/ ˈstoʊnˈdɛf /
adjective
stone-deaf
British
adjective
stone deaf
Idioms
Usage
Use of this word to refer to people with serious hearing difficulties is potentially very offensive: preferred form: profoundly deaf
Etymology
Origin of stone-deaf
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Reason: since his widowed mother had to work, he had been raised mostly by a stone-deaf grandmother who rarely spoke to him and was afraid to let him outside to play.
From Time Magazine Archive
Her dam, Home by Dark, had never raced and was stone-deaf to boot.
From Time Magazine Archive
Engineer Tran Chan Cha, 46, has steamed the Danang-Hue run since the days of the Indo-China war, has been blown up so often that today he is nearly stone-deaf.
From Time Magazine Archive
Nearing 83, he is stone-deaf, inclined to doze off in the middle of important conversations.
From Time Magazine Archive
By the new improvements in the intensifier, it is expected to enable all, except the stone-deaf, to enjoy the phonograph, even when connected, as on railroad trains, with a common telephonic wire.
From With The Eyes Shut 1898 by Bellamy, Edward
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
