Word.ws English Dictionary

deafening

/ˈdɛfənɪŋ(ɡ)/

deafening adjective: loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss. Also the present participle and gerund of deafen.

deafening: loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss
Image: NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

deafening (comparative more deafening, superlative most deafening)

  1. Loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.
    • With a deafening crash lightning strikes the ledge directly above us.1989 May, Uwe George, “Venezuela's Islands in Time”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 538
    • At that instant, Eragon's back ruptured in an explosion of agony so intense, he experienced it with all five senses: as a deafening, crashing waterfall of sound; a metallic taste that coated his tongue; an acrid, eye-watering stench in his nostrils, redolent of vinegar; pulsing colors; and, above...2005, Christopher Paolini, “The Nature of Evil”, in Eldest, page 372
  2. (excessive) Very loud.
    • 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.2011 October 1, Phil McNulty, “Everton 0 - 2 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport

Noun

deafening (countable and uncountable, plural deafenings)

  1. pugging
  2. The process by which something is deafened.
    • Film and dance theory offer a productive vocabulary for considering the effects of these mutings and deafenings.2012, Gary Taylor, Trish Thomas Henley, The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, page 338

Also used as

deafening is also the present participle and gerund of deafen.

deafening meaning in Gujarati, Nepali and Arabic

deafening in Gujarati

બહેરા પાડતા

deafening in Nepali

बहिराउने

deafening in Arabic

loud enough to cause hearing loss
مُصِمّ muṣimm

Examples of deafening in a sentence

  • The suggestion that they work through the holidays met with deafening silence.
  • When the motor stopped, the silence was almost deafening.
  • The deafening roar of jet engines slowly fades away as it grows ever more distant.

All 19 example sentences with deafening

Forms of deafening

Adjective
comparativemore deafening
superlativemost deafening
Noun
pluraldeafenings

Words formed from deafening

Phrases with deafening

Questions about deafening

What does deafening mean?
Deafening means loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.
What is deafening in Gujarati?
Deafening in Gujarati is બહેરા પાડતા. See Deafening meaning in Gujarati.
What part of speech is deafening?
Deafening can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce deafening?
Deafening is pronounced /ˈdɛfənɪŋ(ɡ)/ (UK).

Words near deafening in the dictionary

  1. deafened
  2. deafener
  3. deafeners
  4. deafenest
  5. deafeneth
  6. deafening
  7. deafening silence
  8. deafening silences
  9. deafeningly
  10. deafeningness
  11. deafenings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deafening (page history and authors); deafening (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); deafening (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-deafening.wav.

Cite this entry: “deafening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deafening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.