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Deadens

[ded-n]

Origin

verb (used with object)

1.

to make less sensitive, active, energetic, or forcible; weaken: to deaden sound; to deaden the senses; to deaden the force of a blow.

2.

to lessen the velocity of; retard: to deaden the headway of a ship.

3.

to make impervious to sound, as a floor.

verb (used without object)

4.

to become dead.

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Deadens is always a great word to know.

So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

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Origin:
1655–65; dead + -en¹

Related forms

dead·en·er, noun

un·dead·ened, adjective

Synonyms
1. blunt, diminish, lessen, numb, dull.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To Deadens

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

deaden

1660s "deprive of or diminish (some quality)," from dead. Earlier the verb was simply dead.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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"We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race. Our very organism holds memories and glimpses of that long life of our ancestors which still goes on among so many of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from the great opportunities for helpfulness and a continual ignoring of the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race. To shut one's self away from that half of the race life is to shut one's self away from the most vital part of it; it is to live out but half the humanity to which we have been born heir."

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