Definition of "benumb"
benumb
verb
third-person singular simple present benumbs, present participle benumbing, simple past and past participle benumbed
(transitive) To make numb, as by cold or anesthetic.
Quotations
[…] the Cold was insufferable; nor indeed was it more painful than it was surprising, to come but ten Days before out of the old Castile where the Weather was not only warm but very hot, and immediately to feel a Wind from the Pyrenean Mountains, so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intollerable, and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our Fingers and Toes.
1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], 3rd edition, London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], published 1719, page 344
(transitive, figurative) To deaden, dull (the mind, faculties, etc.).
Quotations
[…] If this lawOf nature be corrupted through affection,And that great minds, of partial indulgenceTo their benumbed wills, resist the same,There is a law in each well-order’d nationTo curb those raging appetites that areMost disobedient and refractory.
c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii]
Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her.
1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 17, in Daniel Deronda, volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons
Five nights a week, six hours a day, for the next four months—and, fortunately, never again—I made my living by exhibiting the peculiar way I am formed. The Clinic had prepared me for it, benumbing my sense of shame, and besides, I was desperate for money.
2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, “Hermaphroditus”, in Middlesex, New York: Picador, page 483