damp

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   slightly wet

   clothes damp with perspiration

2. 2
   verb

   restrain or discourage

   the sudden bad news damped the joyous atmosphere

3. 3
   verb

   deaden a sound or noise, especially by wrapping

   We need to dampen that amplifier.

4. 4
   adj

   In a state between dry and wet; moderately wet; moist.

   25 January 2017, Leena Camadoo writing in The Guardian, Dominican banana producers at sharp end of climate change Once the farms have been drained and the dead plants have been cut down and cleared, farmers then have to be alert for signs of black sigatoka, a devastating fungus which flourishes in damp conditions and can destroy banana farms.

5. 5
   adj

   Despondent; dispirited, downcast.

   27 July 2016, Jane O’Faherty in The Irish Independent, Monarchs and prison officers win big on second race day Though Travis's 'Why does it always Rain on Me' boomed around the stands, there were few damp spirits in Galway on day two of the races.

6. 6
   adj

   Permitting the possession of alcoholic beverages, but not their sale.

   The Roadhouse was twenty-seve miles down the road from Niniltna, nine feet and three inches outside the Niniltna Native Association's tribal jurisdiction, and therefore not subject to the dry law currently in effect. Or was it damp? Kate thought it might have changed, yet again, at the last election, from dry to damp, or maybe it was from wet to damp.

7. 7
   noun

   Moisture; humidity; dampness.

   Ere twice in murk and occidental damp / Moist Hesperus hath quench’d his sleepy lamp,

8. 8
   noun

   Fog; fogginess; vapor.

   Night […] with black air / Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom.

Etymology

From Middle English dampen (“to stifle; suffocate”). Akin to Low German damp, Dutch damp, and German Dampf (“vapor, steam, fog”), Icelandic dampi, Swedish damm (“dust”), and to German dampf imperative of dimpfen (“to smoke”). Also Middle English dampen (“to extinguish, choke, suffocate”). Ultimately all descend from Proto-Germanic *dampaz.