deaden
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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The truth, however, is the obscure word - meaning "to deaden" - is the name of a police-led training exercise.
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
With her red-lipped rictus grin, her eyes that can beam with earnestness one minute and deaden with murderous resignation the next, Goth makes a sublime demon, but she’s also a creature of irreducible pathos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2022
“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
After bandaging them neatly she had administered a potion that would deaden the pain and induce sleep.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
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He suffered two near-fatal poisonings in 2015 and 2017 and developed polyneuropathy, a condition that deadens the feeling in his limbs.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 26, 2024
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
This tough base deadens the sound as the glass hits a table, improves grip and protects the vessel from smashing if you drop it.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 15, 2020
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
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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
Perhaps it’s the Rawlings baseballs, which were slightly deadened this year in a change MLB said an independent lab found would cause balls to fly 1 to 2 feet shorter when hit over 375 feet.
From Seattle Times ● May 1, 2021
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 windows now had the closed blankness of night, a deadened look about them, a look of being blind or deaf.
From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles
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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
And the shine from his latest gold medal hasn’t come close to deadening.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2024
My interest grew more acute with every deadening hour in the junkyard, until one day I had a bizarre thought: that I should enroll in the public school.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
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