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stultify (STUHL-tuh-fai) - v., to render ineffectual, futile, or dull, especially by degrading or frustrating means; to make or cause to appear foolish, ridiculous, or illogical; (arch.) to prove to be of unsound mind or demonstrate (someone's) incompetence.
That final archaic meaning is the original, legal jargon dating to the 1750s. An audience can be stultified by a tedious performance, a scheme can be stultified by incompetent schemers (or by being cleverly outwitted), and a government can by stultified by bureaucracy. All this from Late Latin stultificāre, to make foolish, from Latin stultus, foolish + -ficāre, to make, which has become the English suffix -(i)fy.
---L.
That final archaic meaning is the original, legal jargon dating to the 1750s. An audience can be stultified by a tedious performance, a scheme can be stultified by incompetent schemers (or by being cleverly outwitted), and a government can by stultified by bureaucracy. All this from Late Latin stultificāre, to make foolish, from Latin stultus, foolish + -ficāre, to make, which has become the English suffix -(i)fy.
---L.
