n. Moist air; humidity; moisture.n. A poisonous vapor; specifically, in mining, a stifling or poisonous gas. See black-damp, fire-damp.n. A fog.n. A check; a discouragement.n. Depression of spirits; dejection.Moist; humid; moderately wet: as, a damp cloth; damp air.Clammy.Dejected; depressed.Synonyms Humid, Dank, etc. See moist.To moisten; make humid or moderately wet; dampen.To extinguish; smother; suffocate.To suffocate with damp or foul air in a mine. [Eng.]To check or retard the force or action of: as, to damp a fire by covering it with ashes; especially, to diminish the range or amplitude of vibrations in, as a piano-string, by causing a resistance to the motions of the vibrating body.To make dull or weak and indistinct, as a sound or a light; obscure; deaden.To depress; deject; discourage; deaden; check; weaken.Specifically To diminish or destroy the oscillation of (a metallic body in motion in a magnetic field).[Dampen is now more common in the literal sense, and is sometimes used in the derived senses.]Synonyms To moderate, allay, dispirit.In horticulture, to rot or waste away, as the stems and leaves of seedlings and other tender plants, when the soil and atmosphere in which they are vegetating are too wet or cold: with off: as, flower-seedlings in hotbeds are especially liable to damp off.n. The popular name of a disease which attacks young seedlings and succulent plants, causing them to rot off near the surface of the ground.
