deafening

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdɛfənɪŋ(ɡ)/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

deafening (comparative more deafening, superlative most deafening)

1. Loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.
   • 2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43:

     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. (hyperbolic) Very loud.
   • 2011 October 1, Phil McNulty, “Everton 0 - 2 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport‎:

     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.

• deafening silence

• deaf
• deafen

deafening

1. present participle and gerund of deafen

deafening (countable and uncountable, plural deafenings)

1. (architecture) pugging
2. The process by which something is deafened.
   • 2012, Gary Taylor, Trish Thomas Henley, The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, page 338:

     Film and dance theory offer a productive vocabulary for considering the effects of these mutings and deafenings.

• “deafening”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.