deaden

The truth, however, is the obscure word - meaning "to deaden" - is the name of a police-led training exercise.

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

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

After bandaging them neatly she had administered a potion that would deaden the pain and induce sleep.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

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

While I respect their sense of history and their desire for universal standards, I resist such declarations when they fossilize into something that deadens inspiration.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 28, 2019

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

Nothing but fancy hotels, voices deadened by plush carpeting and marble, and the endless pas de deux between me and the polite server just to get the damn drink from her tray to my lips.

From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2019

He cursed his deadened arm and lack of weapon.

From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

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

Repeatedly returning to themes of globalization and alienation, the 55-year-old director has meticulously chronicled his country’s uneasy plunge into the 21st century as rampant industrialization risks deadening those left behind.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2025

That too I've learned in the cellar, and not by deadening my sense of perception; I'm invisible, not blind.

From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison