Benumbing

That of body is nothing but a kind of benumbing laziness, intermitting exercise, which, if we may believe [1547] Fernelius, causeth crudities, obstructions, excremental humours, quencheth the natural heat, dulls the spirits, and makes them unapt to do any thing whatsoever. ❋ Unknown (2007)

When she returned perhaps their lives would readjust themselves -- but for the moment he longed for some kind of benumbing influence, something that should give relief to the dull daily ache of feeling her so near and yet so inaccessible. ❋ Edith Wharton (1899)

In a benumbing turn of events, Abe Foxman, chief of the influential Anti-Defamation League and opponent of Park51 -- the so-called Ground Zero Mosque -- gave a speech this week decrying the rising culture of anti-Islam bigotry. ❋ Adam Chandler (2010)

Adult novella, a hugely distended tale within the network of tales that makes up the book, 90 pages long, as benumbing for an adult to read as almost any story written for the Young Adult market, whose products are about as close to genuine fiction as megachurches are to monasteries where silence is observed. ❋ Unknown (2010)

This toxic admixture of computer-generated frenzy and live-action torpor succeeds in being, almost simultaneously, genuinely painful -- the esthetic equivalent of needles in eyeballs -- and weirdly benumbing, like eye candy laced with lidocaine. ❋ Unknown (2008)

A prototypical summer release dropped into early November, this furiously raunchy, occasionally bright and eventually benumbing comedy stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as buddies forced to become mentors in a crackpot version of a Big Brother program run by a not-so-former crack addict. ❋ Unknown (2008)

Thou, my Alan, wilt treat as timidity this passive acquiescence, which has sunk down on me like a benumbing torpor; but if thou hast remembered by what visions my couch was haunted, and dost but think of the probability that I am in the vicinity, perhaps under the same roof with ❋ Unknown (2008)

The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs. ❋ Unknown (2008)

Americans, by now, can be forgiven for believing that we know something about the situation in Iraq; we hear about it, after all, every day, in what seems like benumbing detail. ❋ Caryl, Christian (2007)

Then, they said together, ‘Lord be merciful to us both!’ and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night. ❋ Unknown (2007)

But a short time had elapsed since more than one of the great anatomists and physicists of the Italian school had paid dearly for their endeavours to dissipate some of the prevalent errors; and their illustrious pupil, Harvey, the founder of modern physiology, had not fared so well, in a country less oppressed by the benumbing influences of theology, as to tempt any man to follow his example. ❋ Unknown (2007)

The last of these marches was trying, with the north wind blowing in their teeth, drying up everything and benumbing the men. ❋ Unknown (2007)

I think of the veterans, the firefighters and the police officers I've treated who have confided in me their most secret and benumbing terrors, the fears that capture them night after night, releasing them only after they've been shot once again, picked up that body part once again, stood helpless by a dying friend or civilian once again. ❋ Unknown (2006)

The consciousness that being Hungarian meant the same as being lonely, that the Hungarian language was incomprehensible and unrelated to other languagesthere was something benumbing about this. ❋ Kati Marton (2006)