stone-deaf
adjective
totally 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.
See Examples For:
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
Although Mrs. Moore recovered, her fever left her stone-deaf.
From Time Magazine Archive
Almost stone-deaf, looking, in Virginia Woolf's phrase, like a ruined bust of Euripides, Meredith held court.
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
And our translation has this merit, that some of our ultra-moderns will listen to the word 'psychology,' where they would be bat-blind to 'Characters' and stone-deaf to 'Sentiments.'
From Aspects of Literature by Murry, J. Middleton
It was to this latter, more radical aspect that the mass media were stone deaf.
From Salon ● May 4, 2020
Earlier this month, Daltrey told the Daily Mail that "Pete is almost stone deaf".
From The Guardian ● Jul. 27, 2011
The little old man was 76 and stone deaf.
From Time Magazine Archive
One hard-rock miner insists that he personally saw his mother-in-law, stone deaf for years, recover her hearing.
From Time Magazine Archive
You would have to be stone deaf to sleep through it even in a feather bed.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
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.
