muting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The process of making something silent or cutting off its sound.

   The muting of dissenting voices at the meeting troubled many observers.

   Careful muting of the noisy channel improved the final recording.

   Similarsilencing, suppression, stifling

   Oppositeamplification

   Note

   Unlike a bare gerund, this noun can be counted. The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (2012) speaks of "these mutings and deafenings", where each silencing is a separate act that can be studied. The plural, often paired with a similar -ing noun, suits critical writing about voice and sound. To describe the act in progress, reach instead for the verb form.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of mute.

   The producer is muting several tracks to isolate the vocals.

   By muting notifications, she finally focused on her work.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every verb sense of mute, so context decides which is meant: muting a microphone, muting criticism, or, in older writing, a bird muting, which means defecating. That archaic use is where the droppings noun comes from. The silencing senses are transitive and take an object. A rarer transitive meaning, to cast off or molt, also hides in this form.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The dung or droppings of birds.

   The falconer cleaned the muting from the perch before the hunt.

   White streaks of muting marked the cliff where the seabirds nested.

   Similardroppings, dung, guano

   Note

   Nothing to do with silence: this muting belongs with an archaic verb mute, said of a bird voiding its droppings, and it matches the silencing noun only by accident of spelling. It is at home in the plural, as when Charles Darwin, writing before 1883, notes small nesting birds removing "their broken eggs and the early mutings." Keep it for birds, since the word is not used of other animals.

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