What's the difference between deaden and numb?

Deaden


Definition:

  • (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.

Numb


Definition:

  • (a.) Enfeebled in, or destitute of, the power of sensation and motion; rendered torpid; benumbed; insensible; as, the fingers or limbs are numb with cold.
  • (a.) Producing numbness; benumbing; as, the numb, cold night.
  • (v. t.) To make numb; to deprive of the power of sensation or motion; to render senseless or inert; to deaden; to benumb; to stupefy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Symptoms include numbness, tingling and pain in the anterolateral thigh.
  • (2) Headache and vertigo were not linked with exposure to vibration in forestry and a significant part of the numbness reported may be due to the carpal tunnel syndrome.
  • (3) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
  • (4) Forty-four patients of meralgia paraesthetica presented with combination of symptoms mainly of numbness with loss of superficial sensation on the anterolateral aspect of a thigh were selected for the study.
  • (5) Postoperatively, the weakness of the lower extremities was improved immediately, but numbness remained.
  • (6) Numbness sets in.” Philip Hope-Wallace on Look Back in Anger “I must be the only playwright this century to have been pursued up a London street by an angry mob … There was an inescapable tension in the house.
  • (7) A case is reported of a patient with sudden onset, generalized toothache accompanied with a numb chin and lower lip.
  • (8) A 57-year-old man was admitted with the complaints of vague headache and left upper limb numbness.
  • (9) Unilateral enlargement of the tibialis anterior muscle associated with complex repetitive discharges occurred over several months in two patients and was preceded by pain and numbness in the lower leg.
  • (10) But after 14 hours Danilkin's numbing monologue – almost a carbon copy of the prosecutors's case – is beginning to pall.
  • (11) In the nineteenth century, some natives of Peru noticed circumoral numbness, euphoria and analgesia after chewing the leaves of the Erythroxylen coca bush.
  • (12) In a random sample of 3000 women of ages eighteen to fifty-nine years in the city of Västerås, Sweden, 19% of the 2705 responders to a questionnaire complained of cold and white fingers with or without numbness.
  • (13) There were some hormonal patterns characteristic of individual complaints; hot flush was associated with increased FSH and LH, and decreased E1 and E2; difficulty in falling asleep, excitability, and fatigability, with increased FSH and LH, and decreased E2; nervousness, with increased LH and decreased E2; headache, with increased LH and PRL, and decreased E2; feeling of cold, with decreased E2 and PRL; and numbness and shoulder stiffness, with decreased E2.
  • (14) Other common manifestations were unilateral leg pain, numbness or weakness of the leg, and evidence of mild cauda equina compression.
  • (15) Major symptoms included progressive hearing loss, facial numbness, occipital headaches, dizziness, and diplopia of less than a year's duration.
  • (16) A case is reported in which mandibular swelling and lower lip numbness were the first signs of a metastatic adenocarcinoma of the lung.
  • (17) A 60 year-old man complained of numbness and pain in the right lower limb, suggesting lesions of the fifth lumbar and first sacral roots.
  • (18) The prevalence of VWF, numbness and coldness of the fingers, and coldness of the legs was higher the longer the total chain saw operating period.
  • (19) 3) At the severe stage, pain and dullness at the back, numbness at arms and hands, hand coldness, sleep disturbance etc.
  • (20) The perioral numbness (paresthesia) experienced at doses of 750, 900, and 1,000 mg was probably drug related.