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Glite Dictionary
🔥 To burn tissue 🧊 To numb emotions
to cauterize

to cauterize

1 8.9
To make someone less able to feel sadness, guilt, or pity
  • verb
  • /ˈkɔːtəˌraɪz/
  • US
translation icon : insensibilizar
  • She decided to cauterize her feelings to avoid getting hurt again after the painful breakup.

Examples

  • Americans are becoming desperate, but they remain hopeful that this new president will turn things around, and that perhaps the jobs provisions of the new "stimulus" act will cauterize the wound.

    Blog text (30)

  • The harsh realities of life had cauterized his once enthusiastic spirit, making him more detached from others.

  • -Have you been cauterized before?

    Now Is Good (2012)

  • They then take turns holding each other down as they cauterize their wounds with the hot iron.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Even before the Obama administration, little was done to cauterize the murderous rampage of foreign nationals in our nation.

    Blog text (18)

  • After the traumatic experience, he felt as if all his emotions had been cauterized, leaving him numb and unresponsive.

Synonyms

to brutalize
vsto cauterize
  • Offensive
34 7.7

Treat someone cruelly with violence or make them numb to suffering

refers more widely to numbing emotions and moral sensibility rather than causing violence
to desensitize
vsto cauterize
10 6.3

To make people and animals feel less strong reactions to pain, fear or loud sounds, often by repeated exposure

acts directly to deaden emotions and moral feelings rather than only by exposure
to lithify
vsto cauterize
  • Literature
9.9

To make someone emotionally hard and less able to feel or care

deaden feelings and moral sensitivity rather than stress rigid hardness
to callous
vsto cauterize
7.9

To make someone less able to feel or care about other people's pain

focuses more on deadening general emotions and moral sense
to reharden
vsto cauterize
8.2

Make someone less kind or trusting again after they become softer

means causing lasting deadening of emotions rather than a renewed hardness
to animalize
vsto cauterize
  • Offensive
9.7

Make someone cruel and act without human feelings

is about deadening feelings and moral judgment rather than total dehumanization
to bestialize
vsto cauterize
  • NSFW
9.9

Make a person or group lose human feelings and act like a cruel animal

focuses on numbing emotions and conscience rather than full loss of humanity

Antonyms

to sensitize
3 6.1

Make a person more likely to react to something like an allergen or idea

Surface Forms

cauterize infinitive
cauterized past
cauterized past participle
cauterizing present participle
cauterizes third person singular

Morphology

cauterize = cautery (semi-transparent) = cauter + ize

The figurative meaning 'make insensitive or unfeeling' is a metaphorical extension of the literal medical sense (burning to deaden), so the morphological relation is clear but the sense has shifted.

Etymology

Cauterize comes from an old Greek word kauter meaning 'to burn', and it shares the same root as caustic. Think of burning a wound until it no longer feels pain — so to cauterize someone emotionally means to make their feelings numb or dead, which explains the modern figurative meaning.