Word of the day: stultify
Word of the Day: Stultify (verb)
Pronunciation: ['stêl-tê-fI]
Definition: To make someone appear stupid or foolish. Law: To allege or demonstrate someone is mentally incompetent and hence not responsible for their acts. To render ineffective.
Usage: Someone who stultifies is a stultifier and what they do is stultification. Their actions tend to be stultifying.
Suggested Usage: The legal sense is not often occasioned but does arise from time to time, "He stultified himself out of his contract with me by proving he was under psychiatric care when he negotiated it." Non-legal stultification is usually embarrassing, "How could you stultify me like that by being nicer than I am to my parents?" It is most often used in the sense of "render ineffective," however, "All Bart's efforts to convince his daughter to lose weight were stultified by his own rotundity."
Etymology: Late Latin stultificare "to make foolish" from stultus "foolish," a derivation of PIE *stel "stand, put standing," which turns up in "pedestal" (foot-stand), "stilt" (originally "crutch"), and "stout." Latin "stultus" derives from the sense of "unmovable hence uneducated." In English the same root emerged as "still" from Old English stille "fixed, quiet." It is akin to Latin stolidus "stolid, firm-standing." For more PIE, see our FAQ page.
-Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com
Pronunciation: ['stêl-tê-fI]
Definition: To make someone appear stupid or foolish. Law: To allege or demonstrate someone is mentally incompetent and hence not responsible for their acts. To render ineffective.
Usage: Someone who stultifies is a stultifier and what they do is stultification. Their actions tend to be stultifying.
Suggested Usage: The legal sense is not often occasioned but does arise from time to time, "He stultified himself out of his contract with me by proving he was under psychiatric care when he negotiated it." Non-legal stultification is usually embarrassing, "How could you stultify me like that by being nicer than I am to my parents?" It is most often used in the sense of "render ineffective," however, "All Bart's efforts to convince his daughter to lose weight were stultified by his own rotundity."
Etymology: Late Latin stultificare "to make foolish" from stultus "foolish," a derivation of PIE *stel "stand, put standing," which turns up in "pedestal" (foot-stand), "stilt" (originally "crutch"), and "stout." Latin "stultus" derives from the sense of "unmovable hence uneducated." In English the same root emerged as "still" from Old English stille "fixed, quiet." It is akin to Latin stolidus "stolid, firm-standing." For more PIE, see our FAQ page.
-Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com