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
Vocabulary lists containing stupefaction
The Turn of the Screw
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Pollyanna
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Selection Vocabulary 4, Unit 3
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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.
“The Whisper Man” is a particularly egregious example of this stupefaction.
From Salon ● Sep. 2, 2026
Rogan, wearing his persona as a babe-in-the-woods naif, listened to this nonsense in slack-jawed stupefaction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2024
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 ● Dec. 23, 2021
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 ● Jul. 14, 2021
Call it oppression, complicity, stupefaction, call it what you like, it doesn’t matter.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
