stultified

stultified is the simple past and past participle of stultify.

Adjective

stultified (comparative more stultified, superlative most stultified)

Having been stultified or brought to a stop; stymied.
- Cora only stood there, letting him talk. She may have been a stultified neophyte in the practise of her art, but at least she had the devilish ingenuity to explode an emotional bomb under Bradly's male innocence and blow its defences to tatters.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, Sydney: Ure Smith, published 1962
- Sullen now, with stultified spleen, Mrs Dibble grappled her crutches and levered herself upright after an ungainly struggle.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 150
Made dull or unable to think and act properly; stupefied.
- An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and stultified—he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish...1846 [1845], Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Boston: Anti-Slavery Office

stultify (third-person singular simple present stultifies, present participle stultifying, simple past and past participle stultified)

(transitive) To stunt, inhibit (progress, ideas, etc.) or make dull and uninteresting, especially through routine that is overly restrictive or limiting.
- Bureaucracy and over-regulation have stultified the economy.
Synonyms:

inhibit, impair, dull
(dated, transitive) To make useless or worthless.
- His business plan was stultified by new technologies.
(dated, transitive) To cause to appear foolish; to deprive of strength; to stupefy.
- The politicians continued to stultify themselves.
Synonyms:

humiliate
(archaic, transitive) To prove to be of unsound mind or demonstrate someone's incompetence.
- And although, as hath been observed, according to the strict rules of law no person is allows to stultify himself, yet it seems that even at law the contracts of idiots and lunaticks, after office found, and the party legally commited, are void […]1798, Mathew Bacon, “Idiots and Lunaticks”, in Sir Henry Gwillim, editor, A New Abridgment of the Law, volume 3, London: Alexander Strahan, →OCLC, page 539

comparative	more stultified
superlative	most stultified

What does stultified mean?: Stultified means having been stultified or brought to a stop; stymied.
What is stultified the simple past and past participle of?: Stultified is the simple past and past participle of stultify.
What part of speech is stultified?: Stultified is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: stultified (page history and authors); stultify (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “stultified.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stultified. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.