noun
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a state of unconsciousness
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mental dullness; torpor
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of stupor
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin: “astonishment, insensibility,” equivalent to stup(ēre) “to be numb, to be stunned” + -or -or 1
Explanation
You’re not in a stupor if you’re reading this. A person in a stupor is barely conscious, just really out of it. The words stupor and stupid come from the Latin root stupere that means basically “to be stunned.” Extreme heat and humidity, drugs or alcohol, or some kind of medical issue could send you into a stupor. Shocking news can also send you into a stupor, and some people feel like they’re in a stupor in the morning until they’ve had coffee.
Vocabulary lists containing stupor
Grade 11, List 6
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Persepolis
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Out of the Dust
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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:
All this gives the affair a narcoleptic quality, where flashes of radiance are quickly overwhelmed by everything else as we’re put back into our stupor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
How much can a film criticize big tech’s spell over children when the long-running “Toy Story” franchise is similarly designed to lure its audience into a stupor, and for increasingly diminishing returns.
From Salon ● Jan. 4, 2026
Since then residents have been in some kind of stupor, dazed, angry and tired.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2025
Her own spiky guitar riff leads her out of her stupor, like an energetic dog barking its depressed owner out of bed.
From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2024
Puffy-eyed, he gets up, and in a kind of stupor goes to the meadhall door to piss.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
I imagine this wasn’t an easy performance to make work: cunning, stupors and stratagems — how do you act all of those?
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2020
Gooden and the St. Louis Cardinals' ace John Tudor stared each other into stupors, but even Tudor picked himself second for the Cy Young.
From Time Magazine Archive
Relentless, inescapable totalitarianism or the mindless, synthetic stupors of technology?
From Time Magazine Archive
For years, despite spending thousands of dollars looking for a cure and being twitted by his friends about his intermittent stupors, he was unable to do anything about his affliction.
From Time Magazine Archive
All summer Perry undulated between half-awake stupors and sickly, sweat-drenched sleep.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
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.
