stultify
verb
Did you know?
Foolish or absurd behavior often makes us laugh. Take the 2006 comedy film Idiocracy, for instance, which depicts the United States in a dystopian future stultified by centuries of anti-intellectualism and crass commercialism. This description of the movie showcases one sense of stultify, “to cause to appear or be stupid, foolish, or absurdly illogical.” But there is nothing especially funny about the now-archaic original usage of the word. In mid-1700s legal contexts, if you stultified yourself, you claimed to be of unsound mind and thus not responsible for your actions. Nor is there humor in the most common current meaning of stultify, which refers to rendering someone or something dull or ineffective.
Examples of stultify in a Sentence
Peter Georgescu, Forbes, 5 May 2023
The sudden mass switch to virtual forms of working and socializing is expected to jump-start more nuanced investigations into what makes social interaction satisfying—or stultifying.
—Lydia Denworth, Scientific American, 1 July 2020
That was this Oscars in a nutshell: surprising warmth and sincere, unpolished emotions that blossomed in a stultifying format.
—Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 13 Mar. 2023
Many advocates hoped the release would mark the beginning of an end to brutal, litigious patent wars that stultify innovation.
—Michael Fitzgerald, Discover Magazine, 26 Nov. 2014
The goal is to stimulate, not stultify, productive economic activity—the kind that raises output and justifies increased wages.
—Judy Shelton, WSJ, 8 Mar. 2021
The sudden mass switch to virtual forms of working and socializing is expected to jump-start more nuanced investigations into what makes social interaction satisfying--or stultifying.
—Lydia Denworth, Scientific American, 8 June 2020
That thread gets developed in stultifying flashbacks that detail Amelia's efforts to strike out on her own as an aeronaut after her husband falls to his death during one of their rides together.
—Mark Lieberman, Houston Chronicle, 6 Dec. 2019
In this case, Amazon is the Standard Oil of our age, one among a handful of bogeymen gobbling up the economy and stultifying its dynamism.
—Samuel Hammond, National Review, 26 Sep. 2019
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Cite this Entry
“Stultify.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stultify. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.
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stultify
verb
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