SPEECHLESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does speechless mean? 

• SPEECHLESS (adjective)
  The adjective SPEECHLESS has 1 sense:

1. temporarily incapable of speaking

  Familiarity information: SPEECHLESS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SPEECHLESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Temporarily incapable of speaking

Synonyms:

dumb; speechless

Context example:

speechless with shock

Similar:

inarticulate; unarticulate (without or deprived of the use of speech or words)

Derivation:

speechlessness (the property of being speechless)

 Context examples 

But when he challenged the truism I was speechless.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on:—Do you know what the place is?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Catherine sat down, breathless and speechless.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Stanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had no occasion, I thought, to cry out “Silence!” so ferociously, for the boys were all struck speechless and motionless.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She'd never have gone in her right mind, cried Hannah, staring after her, while the girls were rendered quite speechless by the miracle.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He, complete in his lieutenant's uniform, looking and moving all the taller, firmer, and more graceful for it, and with the happiest smile over his face, walked up directly to Fanny, who, rising from her seat, looked at him for a moment in speechless admiration, and then threw her arms round his neck to sob out her various emotions of pain and pleasure.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Then the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect—It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place—such as the moon, for instance—and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)