muffle

1. 1.

   suppress in order to conceal or hide

   “smother a yawn”

   “muffle one's anger”

   “strangle a laugh”

   “repress a cry of fear”

   Synonymssmotherstiflestranglerepress

   Broaderinhibit
2. 2.

   deaden (a sound or noise), especially by wrapping

   Synonymsmutedulldampdampentone down

   Broadersoften

1. 1.

   a kiln with an inner chamber for firing things at a low temperature

   Broaderkiln

Other forms of muffle

plural

muffles·

past tense

muffled·

present participle

muffling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about muffle

What does muffle mean?

muffle means "suppress in order to conceal or hide". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in muffle?

muffle has 2 syllables: muf-fle. The stress falls on "muf". In IPA it is /ˈmʌfəl/.

What is another word for muffle?

Close synonyms include smother, stifle, strangle, repress, mute. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is muffle a common word?

muffle is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.