stupefaction

[stoo-puh-fak-shuhn, styoo-]

noun

1. the state of being stupefied; stupor.

2. overwhelming amazement.

stupefaction

/ ˌstjuːpɪˈfækʃən /

noun

1. astonishment

2. the act of stupefying or the state of being stupefied

Word History and Origins

Origin of stupefaction¹

1535–45; < New Latin stupefactiōn- (stem of stupefactiō ) senseless state, equivalent to stupefact ( us ), past participle of stupefacere to stupefy + -iōn- -ion

Example Sentences

In malignant conflicts, the kind that leave everyone worse off, there is the thing we argue about endlessly, to the point of stupefaction.

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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.

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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.’

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But the purposeful sensory overload mostly yields head-spinning stupefaction, leaving a viewer feeling like Wile E. Coyote after hitting a mesa wall.

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I swam in the freezing loch as my family looked on with some stupefaction.

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