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

Not that anyone reading the signs needs to attempt to blunt or deaden anything.

From BBC ● Jan. 17, 2024

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

I’m to the point of considering bringing in a speaker to deaden their noise or broadcast an offensive podcast at them.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 20, 2023

After bandaging them neatly she had administered a potion that would deaden the pain and induce sleep.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

“I’ve developed life-long friends on Twitter. I think it’s really sad that to get that human connection I’m going to have to deal with harassment again that damages and deadens your humanity.”

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 27, 2022

But as a series of historic droughts deadens vast expanses of South America, he fears a worsening water crisis could do what other calamities couldn’t: Bust his third-generation agribusiness.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 24, 2021

And, I find Charles Yu a wonder — it’s so difficult to engage in structural experimentation and metafictional play that intensifies rather than deadens emotional resonance.

From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2021

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

From Economist ● Apr. 19, 2018

I find myself pawing at my left ear periodically, trying to clean away whatever deadens its ability to collect sounds.

From "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

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

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026

I certainly think it's made me a more appreciative one, especially coming out of winter — a season where my senses inevitably feel a little deadened after marching through a procession of gray, sunless days.

From Salon ● Apr. 1, 2023

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

“We cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond.”

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 29, 2019

Ron stuffed the Sneakoscope into a particularly horrible pair of Uncle Vernon’s old socks, which deadened the sound, then closed the lid of the trunk on it.

From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

She then delivered a speech that denounced the notion of cultural appropriation and its deadening effects on literature.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 31, 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

But it also has a deadening clockwork quality.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 2023

She deserved to hurl whatever was available, to keep us moving, to speak in counterpoint to the deadening strings of my pyrrhic feet.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee