A.Word.A.Day --stuporous

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Sep 7, 2026

This week’s theme
Uncommon adjectives

This week’s words
stuporous

Here I and Sorrow Sit, 1783
Act II Scene I of King John by Shakespeare

Art: Henry Fuseli

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Words made with animal parts

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Nouns put things on the stage. Adjectives control the lighting, moisture, odor, silhouette, and state of consciousness. This week, we leave familiar, everyday vocabulary backstage and spotlight five uncommon adjectives. One even knows when to stop talking.

stuporous

PRONUNCIATION:

(STOO/STYOO-puh-ruhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Dazed, sluggish, or barely responsive.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin stupere (to be stunned or dazed), which also gave us stupendous, stupefy, and stupid. Earliest documented use: 1712.

USAGE:

“However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. ... The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming). A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts as if it’s in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether.”
David Foster Wallace; Consider the Lobster; Gourmet (New York); Aug 2004.

See more usage examples of stuporous in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. -Edith Sitwell, poet (7 Sep 1887-1964)

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