Other forms: deadening, deadened, deadens
To deaden is to take the life out of a sound or a feeling. Deaden the sound, deaden the pain, a deadening routine.
It works on noise, pain and feeling alike, and the participle deadening is the commonest form for the last of these. A deadened room is one treated so that sound does not reflect.
1verbdeadenTo take the life out of a sound or a feeling so that it is barely heard or felt.
“Thick curtains helped to deaden the noise from the street.”
deaden is a dulling.
Dead plus -en, the ending that makes a verb of an adjective.
Proto-Germanic
*daudaz
Proto-West Germanic
*daud
Old English
dēad
Middle English
ded
English
dead
English, today
deaden
From dead + en. Compare Dutch doden (“to kill”), West Frisian deadzje (“to kill”). dead comes from Middle English ded, deed, from Old English dēad, from Proto-West Germanic daud, from Proto-Germanic daudaz. Compare West Frisian dead, dea, Dutch dood, German tot, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål død, Norwegian Nynorsk daud, Swedish död.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA