WOTD

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

A lot of times the stulidfied to this to themselves.....I have always know of this action, I was just unaware there was a word. But really, there is a word for everything.


The thing I like about English is that they take words from any other language, pull it in and make it a part of the English language. The French would NEVER do this due to the fact they would like their language to remain "pure" and the Germans would just add it to some other German word and make that word longer. I love words.