stupefaction
Americannoun
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astonishment
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the act of stupefying or the state of being stupefied
Etymology
Origin of stupefaction
1535–45; < New Latin stupefactiōn- (stem of stupefactiō ) senseless state, equivalent to stupefact ( us ), past participle of stupefacere to stupefy + -iōn- -ion
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.
In malignant conflicts, the kind that leave everyone worse off, there is the thing we argue about endlessly, to the point of stupefaction.
From Washington Post
I suspect he absorbed enough of your stress pre-agreement to go through all five stages of secondhand negativity: concern, sympathetic stress, bored stupefaction, desperation, bargaining for silence.
From Washington Post
Writing for the London Review of Books, novelist Martin Amis lamented her “somewhat top-heavy interest in madness and stupefaction — the vanished knack of ‘making things matter.’
From Washington Post
But the purposeful sensory overload mostly yields head-spinning stupefaction, leaving a viewer feeling like Wile E. Coyote after hitting a mesa wall.
From New York Times
I swam in the freezing loch as my family looked on with some stupefaction.
From The Guardian
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.
