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

There is always a narrative risk when recapitulating events in historical fiction — predetermination can deaden the pulse.

From New York Times ● Jan. 3, 2023

I shake my hand to deaden the pain.

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

“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

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

From Economist ● Apr. 19, 2018

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

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

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

Some in baseball believe the ball has somehow been deadened, muting scoring and offensive statistics across the league.

From Seattle Times ● May 9, 2022

The league’s hope was that a deadened ball would cut down on home runs and increase action in the field of play.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2022

The youngest boy wears the weathered hat of Signora Divino’s deadened husband.

From "The Unfinished Angel" by Sharon Creech

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

But it also has a deadening clockwork quality.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 2023

The ice ball exploded, spraying his entire body with freezing, paralyzing streams of water, weighing down his arms, deadening his legs, squeezing his heart.

From "The Contender" by Robert Lipsyte