Dictionary

tamp down en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. To compact a substance (usually soil) until it is flat.
2. (broadly, idiomatic) To suppress or reduce (something, usually an emotion or thought).
   • [Tina] Satter’s “Reality” has a dramatic vigor that’s missing from the corresponding scenes in [Susanna] Fogel’s “Winner,” but the tamped-down tone in “Winner” is actually closer to the actual tone of those interrogations, as heard firsthand in yet another film—Sonia Kennebeck’s 2021 documentary, “Reality Winner.” 2024 September 11, Richard Brody, ““Winner” Takes Political Comedy Seriously”, in The New Yorker:
   • 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:
   • 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 deciding to opt their children out of mandatory vaccination programs, tried to tamp down panic with cautious, qualified terms of art like broadened diagnostic criteria, heightened public awareness, and improved case finding. To a worried mother searching her son or daughter’s face for a telltale failure of eye contact, they may as well have been speaking Latin. 2015, Steve Silberman, edited by Megan Newman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York: Avery, →ISBN:

Forms

Translations (6)

de stampfen (To compact a substance) · de unterdrücken (To suppress something) · de feststampfen (To compact a substance) · de verdichten (To compact a substance) · de etwas unterdrücken (To suppress something) · de komprimieren (To compact a substance)