deadening

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English

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Verb

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deadening

  1. present participle and gerund of deaden
    • 1948 January and February, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 48:
      Until, of course, the war and its aftermath came to lay their deadening hand on all railway progress.
    • 2024 January 10, Chris Green, “Empowered...energised... and managing for success”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 22:
      So, how are we going to persuade the current government that command-and-control is a deadening leadership style which can never deliver the financial results of a liberated rail industry?

Noun

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deadening (plural deadenings)

  1. The process by which something is deadened.
    • 2012, Daniel Sapen, Freud's Lost Chord: Discovering Jazz in the Resonant Psyche, page 38:
      The structural theory doesn't only focus on the negations, repressions, disavowals, and deadenings of the ego in the face of its encounters within and without.
  2. A forest clearing created by girdling the trees.