stultify

To stultify is to make something foolish, ineffective, or dull. The word joins Latin stultus, “stupid, foolish,” with the English suffix -ify. Wiktionary compares it with Late Latin stultificō.

The verb has a range of recorded senses: in late-17th-century legal usage it could mean to prove someone of unsound mind; from the early 19th century it could mean to make someone appear foolish or deprive them of strength. A later sense, recorded from the 19th century, is to make something useless or worthless. By the 1950s, stultify was also used for inhibiting progress or making something dull and uninteresting—often through excessive restriction or routine.