dumbed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of dumb.

   Critics complained that the network dumbed the news down for ratings.

   The original argument had been dumbed down beyond recognition.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. It is the simple past (critics dumbed it down) and also the participle after have or be (it had been dumbed down). Most uses belong to the transitive verb meaning to make stupid or less demanding, usually with down. The older, now dated verb meaning "to silence" lives on mainly in the literary "speechless" adjective.

2. 2
   adjectiveliterary

   Having been rendered unable to speak; reduced to silence.

   The dumbed mourners stood frozen at the graveside.

   Grief left her dumbed, unable to utter a single word.

   Similarsilenced, speechless, mute, wordless

   Note

   A poet's word rather than an everyday one. It names a silence imposed on someone, often with the cause fused on in front: in 1963 Dennis Brutus does this with pride to describe mouths kept silent, and grief-dumbed or awe-dumbed follow the same pattern. Keep it apart from the verb form in "dumbed down", which is about stupidity, not speech. In plain prose, struck dumb or silenced is the safer choice.

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