Deafening
adj, noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 pugging countable, uncountable
- 2 The process by which something is deafened. countable, uncountable
"Film and dance theory offer a productive vocabulary for considering the effects of these mutings and deafenings."
- 1 present participle and gerund of deafen form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 Loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.
"But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater."
- 2 Very loud. excessive
"At the end of a frantic first 45 minutes, there was still time for Charlie Adam to strike the bar from 20 yards before referee Atkinson departed to a deafening chorus of jeering from Everton's fans."
- 1 loud enough to cause (temporary) hearing loss wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Commentators have variously described the sound of vuvuzelas as "annoying" and "satanic" and compared it with "a stampede of noisy elephants", "a deafening swarm of locusts", "a goat on the way to slaughter", "a giant hive full of very angry bees", and "a duck on speed"."
Related phrases
More for "deafening"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.