stultify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to render absurdly or wholly futile or ineffectual, especially by degrading or frustrating means.
Must we stultify the progress of these reforms with yet more red tape?
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Law. to allege or prove (oneself or another person) to be of unsound mind.
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Older Use. to make, or cause to appear, foolish or ridiculous.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to make useless, futile, or ineffectual, esp by routine
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to cause to appear absurd or inconsistent
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to prove (someone) to be of unsound mind and thus not legally responsible
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of stultify
First recorded in 1760–70; from Late Latin stultificāre, equivalent to Latin stult(us) “stupid” + -i- -i- + -ficāre -fy
Explanation
When something stultifies you, it drains you of your energy, enthusiasm, or pleasure. Listening to an hour-long graduation speech on a hot, humid day might stultify you. The word stultify is sometimes used in place of to "bore" or "exhaust.” An uninspiring boss, too many rules, or a badly performed play can be stultifying. If you hang out in the hot sun all day, the stultifying heat might make you feel limp and listless. Even constant construction noise could stultify a person. To stultify a plan or person is to dampen enthusiasm in a big way.
Vocabulary lists containing stultify
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Power Suffix: -fy
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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:
Not for Gardiner the pietistically devotional approach that can stultify.
From New York Times ● Mar. 31, 2022
Now, that can stultify a pope, in which neutrality becomes an end in itself.
From Salon ● Mar. 21, 2015
But after a while Mr. Yeston’s tuneful feast begins to satiate and eventually stultify, and by the evening’s end it’s as if you’d eaten a whole buffet of pastry.
From New York Times ● Jul. 22, 2011
The reason is the feeling in jazz that if you print something, if you write down the notes, you will stultify the music.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 12, 2010
The finest cutting machine unintelligently operated will stultify the best efforts of the printing plant.
Gems include a rant on critics, the assertion that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing and how writing helped alleviate his stultified misery after a near-death car accident.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2025
Was she the savior of the royal family, dragging a stultified institution, and a nation along with it, into the modern age with her humanity and common touch?
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2020
All these lessons leave me stultified; The hours in the day just drag along — I think they’ve multiplied!
From Washington Post ● Apr. 30, 2020
The stultified senators should distract themselves with dice cricket, a game beloved by indoorsy British children.
From Slate ● Jan. 23, 2020
It means that he stultified himself by making his conception of God absolutely contradict the essentials of his system.
From A Critical History of Greek Philosophy by W. T. (Walter Terence) Stace
When I walked into the arcade, I experienced a feeling I’d stuffed down into my subconscious for decades: the stultifying awkwardness of a middle school dance.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
For Jews, the stultifying fact to be faced is that antisemitism has nothing to do with Jews.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025
In Lebanon, the stultifying heat of summer is overlaid by a layer of anxiety.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2024
The sheer amount of loss can be downright stultifying at times.
From Salon ● May 20, 2023
I worked in a Wall Street mailroom and finally found a job in the post office from which I was fired because I could no longer stand the stultifying work.
From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers
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.
