deaden

“We’d put these special blankets up on the walls to deaden the sound for shooting and it was quiet.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026

The biggest is the ball and the size of the stitches, Nathan said, and MLB made slight adjustments to deaden the ball prior to the 2021 season.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 7, 2023

That predicament will hardly pluck on Labour heartstrings, nor deaden the courage of the party's convictions.

From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2023

“Combine that with his ability to soften the hands and deaden the contact,” Annacone wrote, “and you have terrific ingredients to execute that deft touch.”

From Washington Post ● May 27, 2022

I shake my hand to deaden the pain.

From "Landscape with Invisible Hand" by M.T. Anderson

And the unique geology of the city of Kyiv, built on wetlands and flood plains, deadens signals from explosions, researchers say.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 3, 2023

Lyndall Gordon’s endured a “boredom that deadens the air around my father”.

From Economist ● Apr. 19, 2018

With about 300 pitches per game, this deadens things.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 23, 2017

The appeal of these characters challenges the habit of demographic pigeonholing that deadens and deforms too much of the discussion of popular culture.

From New York Times ● Jul. 3, 2015

It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

For others, stop-start has deadened the joy of driving.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026

It’s pleasant to type on, thanks to each key’s even and clear sound signature, lacking ping or hollowness — though some may find it overly deadened.

From The Verge ● Aug. 30, 2022

More than a decade later, in August 2005, 100 homes were destroyed in the Blue Mountains when a Columbia Rural Electric Association line sparked against a deadened tree and burned 52,000 acres.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 2, 2022

Nothing but fancy hotels, voices deadened by plush carpeting and marble, and the endless pas de deux between me and the polite server just to get the damn drink from her tray to my lips.

From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2019

The cold had deadened his limbs to sticks of bone and flesh, working without feeling to keep his head above the surface.

From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver

It’s hard to know from his palette what thrills him, or if he sees colors at all, given the film’s muddy, deadening grayscape.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026

The decision still means joy or despair, but the virtual nature of acceptance and rejection, the evidence of no human hand, is a little deadening.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026

Likewise, many well-known geniuses like Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang, who were chased out of Europe by the Nazis, brilliantly exposed the hypocrisies and soul deadening conformity of mainstream American culture.

From Salon ● Jan. 1, 2026

If You're Glad I'll Be Frank imagined the speaking clock as a real woman speaking live, her internal monologue utterly at odds with the deadening repetitiveness of endlessly intoning "at the third stroke..."

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

The tone in his voice was flat and deadening and frankly starting to scare me a little.

From "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds