Other forms: muffled, muffling, muffles
To muffle is to make a sound quieter by covering it. Muffle the noise, a muffled voice, muffle the drums.
It works by absorbing rather than blocking, which is why soft things muffle and hard ones reflect — a carpeted room is quieter than a bare one for exactly that reason. Muffled drums were played at military funerals. Note muffler, which is a scarf in Britain and an exhaust silencer in America.
1verbmuffleTo make a sound quieter by covering it.
“She put her hand over the phone to muffle her voice.”
muffle is a quieting.
Middle English muflen comes from an Old French verb meaning to wrap up, from moufle, a mitten. Muff comes from the same wrapping.
Proto-Indo-European
*mewH-
Proto-Germanic
*mawwō — sleeve
Frankish
*muffël — a muff, wrap, envelope
Medieval Latin
muffula — a muff
Old French
enmoufler — to wrap up, muffle
Anglo-Norman
amoufler
Middle English
muflen — to muffle
English, today
muffle
Built from
From Middle English muflen (“to muffle”), aphetic alteration of Anglo-Norman amoufler, from Old French enmoufler (“to wrap up, muffle”), from moufle (“mitten”), from Medieval Latin muffula (“a muff”), of gem origin (—first recorded in the Capitulary of Aachen in 817), from Frankish muffël (“a muff, wrap, envelope”) from mauwu (“sleeve, wrap”) (from Proto-Germanic mawwō (“sleeve”)) + vël (“skin, hide”) (from Proto-Germanic fellą (“skin, film, fleece”). Alternate etymology traces the Medieval Latin - word to Frankish molfell (“soft garment made of hide”) from mol (“softened, forworn”) (akin to Old High German molawēn (“to soften”), Middle High German molwic (“soft”), English mulch) + fell (“hide, skin”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA