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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Lacking the power of speech. Used of animals and inanimate objects.
  2. adj. Often Offensive Incapable of using speech; mute. Used of humans. See Usage Note at mute.
  3. adj. Temporarily speechless, as with shock or fear: I was dumb with disbelief.
  4. adj. Unwilling to speak; taciturn.
  5. adj. Not expressed or articulated in sounds or words: dumb resentment.
  6. adj. Nautical Not self-propelling.
  7. adj. Conspicuously unintelligent; stupid: dumb officials; a dumb decision.
  8. adj. Unintentional; haphazard: dumb luck.
  9. v. To make silent or dumb.
  10. down Slang To rewrite for a less educated or less sophisticated audience.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Mute; silent; refraining from speech.
  2. Destitute of the power of speech; unable to utter articulate sounds: as, a deaf and dumb person; the dumb brutes.
  3. Mute; not accompanied with or emitting speech or sound: as, a dumb show; dumb signs.
  4. Hence Lacking some usual power, manifestation, characteristic, or accompaniment; destitute of reality in some respect; irregular; simulative: as, dumb ague; dumb craft. See phrases below.
  5. Dull; stupid; doltish.
  6. Deficient in clearness or brightness, as a color.
  7. Synonyms and Mute, etc. See silent.
  8. To become dumb; be silent.
  9. To make dumb; silence; overpower the sound of.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
  2. adj. informal, pejorative, especially of a person extremely stupid.
  3. adj. figuratively Pointless, foolish, lacking intellectual content or value.
  4. v. To silence.
  5. v. transitive To make stupid.
  6. v. transitive To represent as stupid.
  7. v. transitive To reduce the intellectual demands of.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Destitute of the power of speech; unable; to utter articulate sounds.
  2. adj. Not willing to speak; mute; silent; not speaking; not accompanied by words.
  3. adj. rare Lacking brightness or clearness, as a color.
  4. v. obsolete To put to silence.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. temporarily incapable of speaking
  2. adj. unable to speak because of hereditary deafness
  3. adj. slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity
  4. adj. lacking the power of human speech

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English dumbien, from Old English dumbian (more commonly in compound ādumbian ("to become mute or dumb; keep silence; hold one’s peace")), from Proto-Germanic *dumbēnan, *dumbōnan (“to be silent, become dumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeubʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, darken, obscure”). Cognate with German dummen ("to become dumb"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English, from Old English. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

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  • fartface Example sentence: this website is dumb. Jun 14, 2012

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‘dumb’ has been looked up 2946 times, added to 24 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 9.