tamp down
tamp down verb: to compact a substance (usually soil) until it is flat.
Verb
tamp down (third-person singular simple present tamps down, present participle tamping down, simple past and past participle tamped down)
- To compact a substance (usually soil) until it is flat.
- To suppress or reduce (something, usually an emotion or thought).
- Parents referred to their sons and daughters as having been kidnapped, as if a thief—dressed in a pediatrician’s white coat—had stolen them away in the night. Meanwhile, public health officials, caught off guard by the soaring prevalence estimates, and alarmed by the growing number of parents...2015, Steve Silberman, edited by Megan Newman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York: Avery, →ISBN
- Mr. Trump’s aides also have tried to tamp down questions about the former president’s frustrations, so as not to elevate Mr. DeSantis.2022 January 17, Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, “Who Is King of Florida? Tensions Rise Between Trump and a Former Acolyte.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Forms of tamp down
| third-person singular present | tamps down |
|---|---|
| present participle | tamping down |
| past participle | tamped down |
| past | tamped down |
Questions about tamp down
- What does tamp down mean?
- Tamp down means to compact a substance (usually soil) until it is flat.
- What part of speech is tamp down?
- Tamp down is a verb.
- What is the past tense of tamp down?
- The past tense of tamp down is tamped down.
Words near tamp down in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tamp down (page history and authors). 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: En-au-tamp down.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tamp down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tamp_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.