(Be)-Numbed

I am down in the mouth today. No, I am not sad. I am literally down one tooth—the #4 pre-molar. The tooth broke at the end of the summer. I avoided the inevitable loss of the tooth as long as possible, but finally the time had come.

As I sat in the dental chair awaiting my fate, my mind wandered to the words “numb” and “benumb.” Frequently, we add a prefix or suffix to a word to alter its meaning. However, if I took the word “numb,” which I defined as “without feeling,” and added the prefix “be-,” as in “surrounded by,” the meaning of the resulting word essentially stays the same—surrounded by a lack of feeling. My curious mind wanted to know exactly what the dentist did to me before pulling my #4 pre-molar.

Upon consulting my Oxford English Dictionary, I pulled out the following information. “Numb” cut its teeth as an adjective meaning “deprived of feeling, or of the power of movement, esp. through excessive cold.” This adjectival form came from an Old English verb, “nim.” “Benumb” developed its bite as a transitive verb meaning “to make (any part of the body) insensible, torpid, or powerless.” The entry later notes that “benumb” now refers mostly to loss of feeling cause by coldness. According to this information, the dentist benumbed my gums with Novocaine causing numbness which allowed a painless tooth extraction.

Not content to let a pulled tooth lie, I consulted the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. The first definition reflects the OED information. However, at some point, “numb” also took on a verb usage, “to make or become numb” (an absolutely terrible definition, by the way). The AHD entry supplies more information about the early history of “numb,” which evolved from a verb, nomin, meaning “to seize.” A “Word History” note details the history of “niman” as an irregular verb which would have been conjugated “nim, nam, num,” with “num” as the past participial form leading to our modern “numb.” In effect, the potential pain of my tooth extraction was taken away or seized—carpe morsus, as opposed to carpe diem, perhaps.

As the OED notes, “benumb” has retained its link with loss of feeling due to coldness in modern usage. The AHD defines the verb, “to make numb, especially by cold” (another terrible definition) and “to render senseless or inactive, as from shock or boredom.” In more modern usage, the dentist numbed my gums with Novocaine causing numbness which allowed a painless tooth extraction. Later, however, I benumbed the pain with an ice pack.

And so I have seized this opportunity to extract meaning from a now-empty space in my mouth. If I have not rendered you senseless from boredom, I will leave you with the thought that all I got from the Tooth Fairy is another hole in my head!

LAGNIAPPE: In the mid-1960’s, John Lennon published some of his jottings and drawings in two slim volumes, usually collected as one, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. In the former, he includes a piece, “At the Denis,” which details a woman’s experience with a tooth which the dentist (denis) “excretes.” In these works, Lennon combines wicked word play with satire of various things. I discovered these works in the mid-1980’s while striding through the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, avoiding work on the dissertation. I highly recommend these works, especially if you are trying to avoid work or losing a tooth.