deaden

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

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

From New York Times ● Jan. 3, 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

I shake my hand to deaden the pain.

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

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

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

With about 300 pitches per game, this deadens things.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 23, 2017

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

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

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

The dentist showed me the medicine and the needle before he deadened my gums, but if he hadn’t I wouldn’t have worried.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

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

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

From "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds