Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use deafening in a sentence

19 example sentences · adjective, noun

Deafening means loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss. Example: “The suggestion that they work through the holidays met with deafening silence.”

Examples of deafening by meaning

adjectiveLoud 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
  • 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.2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43

adjectiveVery 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

nounThe 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

More sentences with deafening

  • The suggestion that they work through the holidays met with deafening silence.From the entry deafening silence
  • When the motor stopped, the silence was almost deafening.From the entry silence
  • The deafening roar of jet engines slowly fades away as it grows ever more distant.2010, Leaf, White Album 2. From the entry powdery
  • He was crushed flat, never even hearing the deafening screech of metal.1995, Peter Allen David, The Incredible Hulk: What savage beast. From the entry waffle
  • There would be a deafening rub-a-dub of drums and blowing of shell-trumpets.1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 189. From the entry rubadub
  • A parade of palanquins circling the city, setting off thousands of rockets that create a deafening bee-like buzzing sound.2016, “FESTIVALS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS!”, in Travel Weekly. From the entry Yanshuei
  • Due to the arrival of a busful of Bavarian tourists, the noise in the hotel lobby was deafening.2013, Serge Quadruppani, The Sudden Disappearance of Worker Bees, Arcade Publishing (2013; original French novel published 2011)…. From the entry busful
  • Deafening sounds drive out the words, and the performers leap violently about the stage, often bashing about their instruments and microphones.1987, E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock, page 61. From the entry bash about
  • A steaming plate of kung pao anything feels like the part of a fireworks show when small, bright bursts pop without deafening booms.2022 July 22, Genevieve Ko, “The Irresistible Thrill of Kung Pao”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 22…. From the entry kung pao
  • As the chanting rose to a deafening pitch, as the black mages pranced about and sprinkled us with foul fluids, all the corpses fibrillated wildly.1996, w:S. P. Somtow [pseudonym; Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul], The Pavilion of Frozen Women, London: Vista, published 1997, →ISBN, page 156. From the entry black mage
  • Arms are raised, the cheers are deafening, the pipes turn to a strathspey and a whole section of the crowd launches into a mad jig.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 239. From the entry strathspey
  • A great sea lifted us high and, crashing down with a deafening roar, carried us swiftly along on light foam as soft as eiderdown.1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 80. From the entry eiderdown
  • A huge fluorescent-lit eateria and pastry shop, the Goldstone was thick with cigarette smoke and deafening talk from hundreds of college and high school students on Christmas break.2004, Terry Gould, “The Goldstone”, in Paper Fan: The Hunt for Triad Gangster Steven Wong, Toronto, Ont.: Random House Canada, →ISBN, page 8. From the entry eateria
  • The goal was waiting for him twenty yards away, and to the accompaniment of a deafening shout from the stands he placed the pigskin across the goal line.1928 November, Paschal N. Strong, “Signals”, in Boys' Life, volume 18, number 11, page 61. From the entry race
  • This was known as 'mee-mawing' and it originiated among the mill workers of Lancashier, because they couldn't be heard above the deafening noise of the looms, even when they shouted.2013, Lisa Riley, Never Judge a Book by its Cover: The Autobiography, →ISBN. From the entry mee-maw

Meaning of deafening

  1. adjective Loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.
  2. adjective Very loud.
  3. noun Pugging.

Full definition of deafening

Questions about deafening in a sentence

How do you use deafening in a sentence?
Deafening is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “The suggestion that they work through the holidays met with deafening silence.”
What is a short sentence with deafening?
“When the motor stopped, the silence was almost deafening.”
What does deafening mean?
Deafening means loud enough to cause temporary or permanent hearing loss.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deafening (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use deafening in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/deafening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.