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
He puts the yawn into stultify, the stupefy into catatonia, stone-facedly delivering the exact same chords, licks, and nasal delivery for over three decades over a backbeat that would have lost the Boer War.
From Salon ● Jul. 11, 2012
So when this cafeteria culture hits the big city, does the collision somehow stultify economic activity? Cities, after all, need people out on the sidewalks.
From New York Times ● Jul. 2, 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
She also, in her overwhelming pride, believes that her own nationals in the States possess sufficient power to stultify any great war effort.
From Over Here Impressions of America by a British officer by Hector MacQuarrie
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
Where it succeeds most is in its insistence on the cosmopolitanism and dynamism of the countryside — where things can happen faster, and ambitions can be greater, than in the stultified cities of the West.
From New York Times ● Nov. 5, 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
She left a little note of farewell, simple and loyal, hopeful, yet somehow stultified.
From Valley of Wild Horses by Zane Grey
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
The setting needn’t be explicitly Norway, but the stultifying strictures of this middle-class world must be in place for Ibsen’s vision to have its detonating effect.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 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 years had passed with a stultifying sameness.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
