benumb

English

Etymology

be- +‎ numb

Pronunciation

• enPR: bē-nŭmʹ, IPA^(key): /bi.ˈnʌm/
• Hyphenation: be‧numb
• Rhymes: -ʌm

Verb

benumb (third-person singular simple present benumbs, present participle benumbing, simple past and past participle benumbed)

1. (transitive) To make numb, as by cold or anesthetic.
   • 1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, , London: Iohn Day, , →OCLC, book II, page :

     […] the sayd Phillip […] in the same his pilgrimage was stricken with such colde, that he fell into a palsey, and was benumbed of the right side of his body.

   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, , London: W Taylor , →OCLC, page 344:

     […] the Cold was insufferable; nor indeed was it more painful than it was surprising, to come but ten Days before out of the old Castile where the Weather was not only warm but very hot, and immediately to feel a Wind from the Pyrenean Mountains, so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intollerable, and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our Fingers and Toes.

   • 1847 December, Acton Bell [pseudonym; Anne Brontë], chapter 2, in Agnes Grey. , London: Thomas Cautley Newby, , →OCLC:

     ‘My hands are so benumbed with the cold that I can scarcely handle my knife and fork.’

2. (transitive, figurative) To deaden, dull (the mind, faculties, etc.).
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     […] If this law
     Of nature be corrupted through affection,
     And that great minds, of partial indulgence
     To their benumbed wills, resist the same,
     There is a law in each well-order’d nation
     To curb those raging appetites that are
     Most disobedient and refractory.

   • 1741, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XI”, in Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: C Rivington, ; and J. Osborn, , →OCLC, page 18:

     I struggled, and trembled, and was so benumb’d with Terror, that I sunk down, not in a Fit, and yet not myself […]

   • 1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 17, in Daniel Deronda, volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:

     Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her.

   • 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, “Hermaphroditus”, in Middlesex‎, New York: Picador, page 483:

     Five nights a week, six hours a day, for the next four months—and, fortunately, never again—I made my living by exhibiting the peculiar way I am formed. The Clinic had prepared me for it, benumbing my sense of shame, and besides, I was desperate for money.

Derived terms

Translations