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Deafen   Listen
verb
Deafen  v. t.  (past & past part. deafened; pres. part. deafening)  
1.
To make deaf; to deprive of the power of hearing; to render incapable of perceiving sounds distinctly. "Deafened and stunned with their promiscuous cries."
2.
(Arch.) To render impervious to sound, as a partition or floor, by filling the space within with mortar, by lining with paper, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deafen" Quotes from Famous Books



... narrated by many writers of the Shaman screaming and distorting of the features. Very few people know of what the human, voice is capable. It can not only be trained to divine song, but to such demoniacal howling as to deafen and appall even the guardians of a lunatic asylum. In Lapland, Central Asia, or on Nootka Sound the initiated are trained in remote solitudes to these utterances, to which no one can listen without terror. My ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... considerable amount of study, she was allowed to portion it out as suited her inclination, and was no longer forbidden to interrupt herself for the sake of her sisters. It was infinite comfort to be no longer obliged to deafen her ears to the piteous whine of fretful incapacity, and to witness the sullen heaviness of faculties overtasked, and temper goaded into torpor. The fact once faced, the result was relief; Maria was spared and considered, and Phoebe found the governess much kinder, not only to her ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his ears. "She can deafen a man when she cannot set her mark on him otherwise. Let us speedily get rid ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... inspiration in these benches or cushions, by which they are to be communicated, or does the echo of these walls whisper the secret in your ears? No! but the echo of every other wall, the murmur of every stream, aye! the hoots and hisses of every street in the nation, ring it in your ears, and deafen you with their din. The people have a voice of their own, and it must, it will be, sooner or later heard: and I, as in duty bound, will always exert every nerve and every power of which I am ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... odd adventure befel me; for, going to the inn of the place where I meant to lie that night, I found it in possession of a roystering crew of gallants, who sat and quaffed their sack and sang lustily, roaring and quarrelling enough to deafen a man. When, by dint of hard pushing, I had made myself a seat at the table and called for my supper—for I was hungry—they gave over their wrangling and began to look hard at me. There was much whispering among them, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... heard much lately of patriotism, and of its aid being invoked on the side of slavery and injustice, but the very prosperity of this people has been called in to deafen them to the voice of duty, and to lead them onward in the pathway of sin. Thus has the blessing of God been converted into a curse. In the spirit of genuine patriotism, I warn the American people, by all that is ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... him to be almost intolerable. The whole swarm would be at his head now, he supposed; for instead of silencing the angry buzzing around his uncle's memory, he had probably raised a tumult which would deafen his own ears before it was over. Here, as in other hours and scenes, his resolve had acted less as a restraint than as a spur which had impelled him to the opposite extreme ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... alarm clock scaring you out of sweet dreams in the winter, while it's dark, and you get up and dress in the cold and heat a little coffee over a lamp and beat it for the factory,—and stand on your feet all morning, in a noise that would deafen you, feeding a thing you ain't got no interest in? It don't never need no rest! By eleven o'clock you think you're all in, that the morning'll never end, but at noon you get a twenty five cent feed that lasts you until about five in the afternoon,—and then you don't know which way the machine's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid. Margaret flung open the door to the stairs. A noise as of drums seemed to deafen her. A woman, an old woman, was descending, with figure erect, with face impassive, with lips ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... accuse me of making phrases, but it is you who deafen yourself with words. What, after all, is that crown of Illyria that you are always talking about? It is worth nothing except on a king's head; elsewhere it is obstruction, a useless thing, which for flight is carried hidden away in a bonnet-box ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... with his sight. His desire to do was not to be crushed with his ability for doing. What then of the empty days to come? How smother the passion for his work? And if he did smother it, what remained? While he lived, how deafen himself to the call of life? Through what channel could he hope to work out the things that were in him? And how remain himself if constantly denying to himself the things which were his? It was that tormented him more than the relinquishing of the specific thing he had believed would crown the work ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... when the solemnity of the entertainment increases in proportion to the noise made, there is a full orchestra. The choruses bawl, the bamboos deafen one with their loud noise like that of huge wooden bells, the krobs sob desperately at the way they are treated by the plectrum, the ciniloi whistles and laments, and all without any fixed measure of time or modulation of tones, in a ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... rose a shout loud enough to deafen all Saint Dominic's. The ball was flying fifty feet up in the air, and Raleigh was slowly walking, bat in hand, back to the tent he had ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... pray; but teach me at least how not to dissipate myself in every direction, for as soon as I try to collect myself I go to pieces; I live in a perpetual state of dissolution. It is like a thing arranged on purpose; as soon as I try to shut the cage all my thoughts fly off—they deafen me with ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them with puns ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... travelled for sixty leagues along a river, without being able to find any bridge or ford at which they could pass over. In one place they found this river to form a cataract of 200 fathoms in perpendicular fall, making such a noise as was almost sufficient to deafen any person who stood near. Not far beyond this fall, the river was found to glide in a smooth channel, worn out of the rock; and at this place they constructed a bridge by which they passed to the other side, and entered into a country ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... parade at the last encampment of the G.A.R., a woman in the crowd of spectators made herself not only conspicuous, but rather a nuisance by the way she carried on. She waved a flag with such vigor as to endanger the bystanders and yelled to deafen them. An annoyed man in the crowd after politely requesting her to moderate her enthusiasm, quite without effect, bluntly told her ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... unreasoning impulse of concealment was still strong. It was almost as if the whole horror of it were not so plainly thrust upon her if none but she knew it; then there was the agony of shame which made her fain to turn her back and deafen her ears to her own self, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of the vigilance of his four nurses and six under-nurses, he would escape into the street, and run about with the little boys he met there. One day he gave one of them a sovereign for a locust. Certainly the locust was a "double-drummer", and could deafen the German Band when shaken up judiciously; still, it was ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson



Words linked to "Deafen" :   damp, make noise, soften, desensitise, weaken, resound, desensitize, dampen, deaf, break, noise



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