(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.
Mortify
Definition:
(v. t.) To destroy the organic texture and vital functions of; to produce gangrene in.
(v. t.) To destroy the active powers or essential qualities of; to change by chemical action.
(v. t.) To deaden by religious or other discipline, as the carnal affections, bodily appetites, or worldly desires; to bring into subjection; to abase; to humble.
(v. t.) To affect with vexation, chagrin, or humiliation; to humble; to depress.
(v. i.) To lose vitality and organic structure, as flesh of a living body; to gangrene.
(v. i.) To practice penance from religious motives; to deaden desires by religious discipline.
(v. i.) To be subdued; to decay, as appetites, desires, etc.
Example Sentences:
(1) she shudders – she has declined all reality TV invitations, and the closest she has ever come to a wardrobe malfunction was a minor ding-dong over some exposed thigh once while presenting Crimewatch, about which she was mortified.
(2) EPA Gazza’s Italia 90 tears were but a trickling tributary compared with the Amazon of anguish unleashed by the shell-shocked hosts during their mortifying 7-1 loss to Germany.
(3) Karen Harding later described herself as “mortified”.
(4) He added that the situation was equally bad for his two sons, who were mortified by the pictures published in the News of the World.
(5) I don't use my kids' real names on my blog and I try to avoid writing anything that would have mortified me growing up, but might they resent me later?
(6) Farage prefaced his comments with a prediction that he was sure the other leaders would be “mortified that I dare to even talk about it”.
(7) He is toughest of all on himself: nearly 50 years on he is still mortified by his rhyming of "woman" with "human" in a song that got yanked from Anyone Can Whistle .
(8) "A mortifying and appalling experience," said one, while another fan posted on the standup's Facebook page: "Absolutely awful.
(9) Smith replied: “It has been the most mortifying experience for me in this contest to have been painted as sexist, because it’s the last thing I am.
(10) It was mortifying, actually.” “But you decided to play into it?” I ask her.
(11) They’d be mortified if they were caught doing that to LGBT people or Muslims.
(12) The presenter apologised and said he was "mortified" by the accusation .
(13) After one particularly mortifying Saturday afternoon when she saw me in the Wimpy with – the horror of it all!
(14) The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses.
(15) My hope is that the government of Sheikh Hasina might actually be mortified by this letter.” Bangladesh must act on these brutal attacks on bloggers | Letters Read more The letter comes after the blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death last week on a crowded street in Sylhet , Bangladesh’s fifth-largest city.
(16) I have plenty of Labour-voting friends who are happy to cheer Venezuelan nationalism, but who would be mortified to be called British nationalists.
(17) Read it as a teenager and you wince for poor mortified Lizzie and Jane, thinking perhaps of times when our own mother said the wrong thing.
(18) He added: "I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.
(19) I’d be mortified if Boris Johnson was made leader of the Tory party, because it will say something profoundly awful about British politics.” “I think he is a showman, and an effective class clown if you like, but the class clown tends to be disruptive, as I think he would be if he had the chance to put his silly views into practice.” The Conservative former chancellor Norman Lamont also came to Johnson’s defence, saying it was a “fact there were fascist theorists who believed very strongly in a united Europe”.
(20) When Aston Pride ended this March, local people were mortified at receiving no recognition, not even a junior official from Eric Pickles's Department for Communities to visit, or a letter of praise for being the top NDC after all those years of giving so much and overcoming such obstacles.