verb (used with object)
- to make less sensitive, active, energetic, or forcible; weaken: to deaden sound; to deaden the senses; to deaden the force of a blow.
- to lessen the velocity of; retard: to deaden the headway of a ship.
- to make impervious to sound, as a floor.
verb (used without object)
- to become dead.
verb
- to make or become less sensitive, intense, lively, etc; damp or be damped down; dull
- (tr) to make acoustically less resonanthe deadened the room with heavy curtains
1660s “deprive of or diminish (some quality),” from dead (adj.) + -en (1). Earlier the verb was simply dead. Related: Deadened; deadening.