damp

From Middle English damp (noun) and 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.

• enPR: dămp, IPA^(key): /dæmp/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æmp

damp (comparative damper, superlative dampest)

1. In a state between dry and wet; moderately wet; moist.
   • 25 January 2017, Leena Camadoo writing in the 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.

   • 1697, John Dryden translating Virgil, Aeneid Book VI

     She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear,

     O'erspread with a damp sweat and holy fear.

   The lawn was still damp so we decided not to sit down.

   The paint is still damp, so please don't touch it.

2. (figuratively) 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.

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, ll. 522-3:

     All these and more came flocking; but with looks / Down cast and damp.

3. Permitting the possession of alcoholic beverages, but not their sale.
   • 2002, Dana Stabenow, A Fine and Bitter Snow, →ISBN, page 32:

     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.

Damp commonly is used for disagreeable conditions and moist often is used for agreeable conditions:

• damp clothes
• moist cake
• a damp compress (hot or cold)
• a moist, sweaty brow

• moist
• thoan/thone (dialect)

• dampen
• dampness

• Appendix:Word formation verb -en noun -ness

damp (countable and uncountable, plural damps)

1. Moisture; humidity; dampness.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act II, Scene 1,

     Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

     Moist Hesperus hath quench’d his sleepy lamp,

   • 1764, Elizabeth Griffith, Amana, London: W. Johnston, Act V, p. 49,

     What means this chilling damp that clings around me!

     Why do I tremble thus!

   • 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Chapter 10,

     Unceasing, soaking rain was falling; the very lamps seemed obscured by the damp upon the glass, and their light reached but to a little distance from the posts.

   • 1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, Penguin, 1942, Chapter 5, p. 160,

     But what was worse, damp now began to make its way into every house—damp, which is the most insidious of all enemies, for while the sun can be shut out by blinds, and the frost roasted by a hot fire, damp steals in while we sleep; damp is silent, imperceptible, ubiquitous.

   • 2005, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, London: Faber, 2010, Chapter 10,

     We sometimes kept our Wellingtons on the whole day, leaving trails of mud and damp through the rooms.

2. (archaic) Fog; fogginess; vapor.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

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

   • 1810, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Elizabeth Shelley, “Warrior” in Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, London: John Lane, 1898, p. 57,

     Her chilling finger on my head,

     With coldest touch congealed my soul—

     Cold as the finger of the dead,

     Or damps which round a tombstone roll—

   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, Chapter 40,

     Summer was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows.

3. (archaic) Dejection or depression; something that spoils a positive emotion (such as enjoyment, satisfaction, expectation or courage) or a desired activity.
   • 1713, Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy, London: Jacob Tonson, Act III, Scene 1, p. 35,

     Ev’n now, while thus I stand blest in thy Presence,

     A secret Damp of Grief comes o’er my Thoughts,

   • 1728, George Carleton (attributed to Daniel Defoe), The Memoirs of an English Officer, London: E. Symon, p. 72,

     But though the War was proclaim’d, and Preparations accordingly made for it, the Expectations from all receiv’d a sudden Damp, by the as sudden Death of King William.

   • 1769, Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, London: J. Dodsley, p. 33,

     It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents, that cast an occasional damp upon trade.

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 50,

     No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her triumph.

   • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 10,

     […] Mrs. Gummidge […] , I am sorry to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by immediately bursting into tears […]

   • 1866, James David Forbes, letter to A. Wills dated 2 January, 1866, in Life and Letters of James David Forbes, London: Macmaillan, 1873, p. 429,

     […] I was concerned to hear from your brother that Mrs. Wills’ health had prevented her accompanying you to Sixt as usual. It must have thrown a damp over your autumn excursion […]

4. (archaic or historical, mining) A gaseous product, formed in coal mines, old wells, pits, etc.
   • 1733, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies, London: Jacob Tonson, Chapter 1, p. 19,

     There are sulphurous Vapours which infect the Vegetables, and render the Grass unwholsom to the Cattle that feed upon it: Miners are often hurt by these Steams. Observations made in some of the Mines in Derbyshire, describe four sorts of those Damps.

• afterdamp
• blackdamp
• chokedamp
• dampproof
• damp proofing
• damp sheet
• firedamp
• rising damp
• stinkdamp
• whitedamp

damp (third-person singular simple present damps, present participle damping, simple past and past participle damped)

1. (transitive, archaic) To dampen; to render damp; to make humid, or moderately wet

   Synonym: moisten

   to damp cloth

2. (transitive, archaic) To put out, as fire; to depress or deject; to deaden; to cloud; to check or restrain, as action or vigor; to make dull; to weaken; to discourage.
   • 1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit Book 1 Chapter 34

     My Lords, that I am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister of this free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self-reliance of its people.

   • To damp your tender hopes - (Can we date this quote by Mark Akenside?)
   • Usury dulls and damps all industries, improvements, and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring if it were not for this slug (Can we date this quote by Francis Bacon?)
   • How many a day has been damped and darkened by an angry word! - (Can we date this quote by Sir John Lubbock?)
   • The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers. - (Can we date this quote by Thomas Babington Macaulay?)

3. (transitive) To suppress vibrations (mechanical) or oscillations (electrical) by converting energy to heat (or some other form of energy).

   • Hollow rollers damp vibration. -

• M.D. Pa.

From German Low German damp

damp c (singular definite dampen, plural indefinite dampe)

1. steam

damp

1. imperative of dampe

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑmp

damp m (plural dampen, diminutive dampje n)

1. vapour (UK), vapor (US)

• zuurdamp

damp

1. first-person singular present indicative of dampen
2. imperative of dampen

From German Low German damp

damp m (definite singular dampen, indefinite plural damper, definite plural dampene)

1. steam
2. vapour (UK), vapor (US)

• dampe

damp

1. imperative of dampe

• “damp” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

From German Low German damp

damp m (definite singular dampen, indefinite plural dampar, definite plural dampane)

1. steam
2. vapour (UK), vapor (US)

• dampe

• “damp” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

damp

1. past tense of dimpa.