stultify

Verb

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

1. (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.
   • From the economic point of view, the concentration of future construction into a dozen or so standard classes should be for the good, provided it is not adhered to too rigidly, and allowed to stultify progress in design and further efforts to improve the efficiency of the steam locomotive, which...1950 December, H. C. Casserley, “Locomotive Cavalcade, 1920-1950—6”, in Railway Magazine, page 847

   Synonyms:

   inhibit, impair, dull

2. (dated, transitive) To make useless or worthless.
   • His business plan was stultified by new technologies.
   • Here was a disaster—her ingenious scheme completely stultified.1886 May, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXII, in The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC
3. (dated, transitive) To cause to appear foolish; to deprive of strength; to stupefy.
   • The politicians continued to stultify themselves.
   • Was the House to stultify itself by agreeing to the opposite principles of these opposed Bills?1855 June 25, Lord Seymour, “Education Bill”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), volume 139, column 79

   Synonyms:

   humiliate

4. (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