(a.) To make as dead; to impair in vigor, force, activity, or sensation; to lessen the force or acuteness of; to blunt; as, to deaden the natural powers or feelings; to deaden a sound.
(a.) To lessen the velocity or momentum of; to retard; as, to deaden a ship's headway.
(a.) To make vapid or spiritless; as, to deaden wine.
(a.) To deprive of gloss or brilliancy; to obscure; as, to deaden gilding by a coat of size.
Example Sentences:
(1) Later, when Leven moved to another squat, in Maida Vale, London, he suggested they bring in a bass player and percussionist to form a band, and they started rehearsing "with mattresses around the walls to deaden the sound, but still annoying the neighbours".
(2) But I am trying to claw the innocent joy of Halloween out of the cold, deadened clutches of the Zombie of Forced Sexiness.
(3) My guides are three of the founders of a pressure group-cum-political party called 1st 4 Kirkby , founded to try to break through what they see as deadened local politics (there are 63 councillors in the borough of Knowsley, all of them Labour), and push for a very different regeneration plan.
(4) Yesterday, David Cameron pushed things along , acknowledging that boosting Holyrood’s status would reopen big questions for England, and making reference to last year’s report by the McKay commission – a plan that offered a somewhat underwhelming vision of “compromise rather than conflict”, but set out a future in which: “Decisions taken in the Commons which have a separate and distinct effect for England (or England-and-Wales)” would largely “be taken only with the consent of a majority of MPs sitting for constituencies in England (or England-and-Wales).” As is usually the case with such texts, most of it was couched in terms of deadened officialspeak.
(5) All this dust has a peculiar way of deadening the sound.
(6) These scenes still have a certain, fleeting power and effect – even if we are deadened and wearied by the pornographic thrill of spectacular screen violence.
(7) And it's a bit deadening because journalists are, as a rule, better at thinking about journalism – including the most fundamental question of all, hinted at in my title tonight – of whether there is such a thing as journalism.
(8) With its tendencies to exhaust, to amplify despair, to deaden my anguish briefly before bringing it back two-fold – booze was counter to the mission.
(9) Despite the diversity of his career, a common thread throughout all his films, from the gleeful highs of Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, True Romance, The Last Boy Scout and Crimson Tide, to the deadening lows of his first film The Hunger, Revenge and Domino (Keira Knightley plays a bounty hunter – let us speak no more about it), is the whizz-bang-chop-cut style.
(10) The familiar biblical words, the quavering congregation working its way through Victorian hymns, the priest, who often has never met the deceased: all these deaden and distance.
(11) Though Tony Blair (currently, in his pronouncements on the EU , highlighting Labour's reputation for floating far above ordinary lives with an amazing absence of self-awareness) was actually a much better rhetorician than received wisdom suggests, everyone around him quickly succumbed to a deadened kind of thought and expression.
(12) In the US, relying on donors deadens the arts, filling their boards with the conservative-minded, failing to stimulate experiment and imagination – as only independent funding can.
(13) It also plans to mitigate the deadening effects of strict delineation of segments of the city by creating mixed-use neighbourhood centres using “new design ideas and concepts to provide a complete live-work-play-learn environment for residents”.
(14) The word "consultation" has that deadening thud of the political euphemism.
(15) It is perhaps some token of their jitteriness about school surveillance that no minister will talk to me, but I am invited to send in a list of questions, which brings forth a pretty miserable response, indicative of that ingrained tendency of people in power to respond to stuff based on matters of principle with deadening officialspeak.
(16) The spectre of “old corruption” – a deadening lattice of sweetheart deals, public offices traded for personal profit – was a permanent fixture at British elections until the mid-19th century.
(17) He asked for "pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts" and "forgiveness for those who by their decisions at the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies".
(18) Similarly, alcohol is often used to reduce anxiety and deaden sadness.
(19) Boredom and a deadening sense of total pointlessness seem to drive a lot of meaningless crimes, from the Hungerford and Columbine shootings to the Dando murder, and there have been dozens of similar crimes in the US and elsewhere over the past 30 years.
(20) The possible action, as risk factor of peripheral arteriosclerosis, of the emotional stress; the effect of the social support to deaden this stress, and some aspects of the personality as fundamental regulator of the individual behaviour, are analyzed.
Diminish
Definition:
(v. t.) To make smaller in any manner; to reduce in bulk or amount; to lessen; -- opposed to augment or increase.
(v. t.) To lessen the authority or dignity of; to put down; to degrade; to abase; to weaken.
(v. t.) To make smaller by a half step; to make (an interval) less than minor; as, a diminished seventh.
(v. t.) To take away; to subtract.
(v. i.) To become or appear less or smaller; to lessen; as, the apparent size of an object diminishes as we recede from it.
Example Sentences:
(1) Diminished CMD was most common with AR (7 of 12) but was also seen with acute tubular necrosis (2 of 6) and cyclosporin toxicity (2 of 3).
(2) If women psychiatrists are to fill some of the positions in Departments of Psychiatry, which will fall vacant over the next decade, much more attention must be paid to eliminating or diminishing the multiple obstacles for women who chose a career in academic psychiatry.
(3) The results indicated that the role of contact inhibition phenomena in arresting cellular proliferation was diminished in perfusion system environments.
(4) In vitro studies in cardiac Purkinje fibers suggested that reversal of amitriptyline-induced cardiac membrane effects by sodium bicarbonate may be attributed not only to alkalinization but also to increased in extracellular sodium concentration, diminishing the local anesthetic action of amitriptyline and resulting in less sodium channel block.
(5) Virus replication in nasal turbinates was not diminished while infection in the lung was suppressed sufficiently for the infected mice to survive the infection.
(6) The last stems from trends such as declining birth rate, an increasingly mobile society, diminished importance of the nuclear family, and the diminishing attractiveness of professions involved with providing maintenance care.
(7) In contrast, insertion of a pre-S(1) sequence between HBcAg residues 75 and 83 abrogated recognition of HBcAg by 5 of 6 anti-HBc monoclonal antibodies and diminished recognition by human polyclonal anti-HBc.
(8) In addition, the activity of the large cells diminished with time after primary immunization, but that of the small cells remained stable.
(9) The antibody reacted with adult as well as with cord red cells, and its reactivity was strongly diminished by treatment of the cells with neuraminidase and to a lesser degree by treatment with protease.
(10) The concomitant reduction in aortic pressure and increase in heart rate following total occlusion of the portal vein were most pronounced during the first weeks after stenosis, and were probably due to diminished venous return to the heart.
(11) Conversely, the latter diminished basal plasma glucose levels.
(12) Subsequently, the inflammatory reaction diminishes, as can be seen on smears from tympanic effusions.
(13) Both Apo AI (48%) and Apo AII (5.5%) were greatly diminished and Apo E was present in remarkably high amounts (39%) with two additional isoforms (Apo E'1 and Apo E'2).
(14) (3) The diminished autophosphorylation rate was due to a decreased responsiveness of the kinase activity to the action of insulin.
(15) The isoenzyme mobility diminished in both tumour chromatin extracts, and the slow migrating gamma isoenzyme exhibited sensitivity to L-cysteine inhibition.
(16) Segmental function was diminished an average of 67.8% in "noses" and 46.6% in "bridges".
(17) Flexion of the knee beyond 40 degrees progressively diminished viability of the edges of the wound, particularly the lateral edge.
(18) EEG waves were similar during Aw and Qw but they diminished in amplitude and frequency when passing from these states to Qs, and both parameters increased during As.
(19) After 3-5 days of side-arm traction, swelling had usually diminished sufficiently to allow the elbow to be safely hyperflexed to stabilize the fracture after elective closed reduction.
(20) In the patients with aplastic anaemia the iron flux was diminished, but never eliminated, demonstrating that the exchangeable compartment was not solely erythroblastic, but included non-erythroid transferrin receptors.