Speechless means so struck by something that you cannot say anything. Left me speechless, quite speechless, speechless with rage.
It is almost always figurative and almost always about a strong feeling arriving faster than words — speechless with rage, speechless with gratitude. Left speechless is the fixed phrase. The literal medical sense, having no power of speech, is now expressed by aphasia or non-verbal instead. Note that the compound is a thousand years old: Old English had spraecleas, built exactly the same way.
1adjectivespeechlessSo struck by something that you cannot say anything.
“When they told her she had won, she was speechless and could only stare at them.”
speechless is a state of being unable to speak.
Old English spraecleas is speech plus -less, and the modern word is the same compound worn down. The Germanic languages all still build it that way — Dutch sprakeloos, German sprachlos.
Proto-Germanic
*sprēkalausaz
Old English
sprǣċlēas — speechless; without the power of speak
Middle English
specheles
English, today
speechless
From Middle English specheles, from Old English sprǣċlēas (“speechless; without the power of speak”), from Proto-Germanic sprēkalausaz, equivalent to speech + less. Cognate with West Frisian sprakeleas (“speechless”), Dutch sprakeloos (“speechless”), German Low German spraaklos (“speechless”), German sprachlos (“speechless”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA