tamping down

Verb

tamp down (third-person singular simple present tamps down, present participle tamping down, simple past and past participle tamped down)

1. To compact a substance (usually soil) until it is flat.
2. (broadly, idiomatic) 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