drown out

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drown out (third-person singular simple present drowns out, present participle drowning out, simple past and past participle drowned out)

1. (idiomatic) To cover, obscure, or overwhelm by being louder or more intense than.

   Synonym: outdin

   He uses the music to drown out other noises around him.

   • 2021, Michael Farris Smith, chapter 27, in Nick, New York, Boston, London: Little, Brown and Company, page 142:

     The fire had burned through the night and seemed barely affected by the efforts to drown it out and almost as if it were simply bored of the festival it had created, the fire lessened at daybreak.

   • 2014 November 18, Daniel Taylor, “England and Wayne Rooney see off Scotland in their own back yard”, in The Guardian‎:

     Charlie Mulgrew could easily have been shown two yellow cards by a stricter referee and amid all the usual Anglo-Scottish pleasantries, the two sets of fans put an awful lot of effort into trying to drown out one another’s national anthems.

   • 2022 November 10, Ava Max, Melanie Fontana, Michel Schulz, Ryan Tedder, Madison Love, Cirkut, “Weapons”, in Diamonds & Dancefloors‎, performed by Ava Max:

     Stop using your words as weapons / They're never gonna shoot me down / Stop, it's time that you learned a lesson / My love is gonna drown you out

   • 2023 May 6, James Poniewozik, “Charles III Was Crowned King. But Can He Ever Be the Star?”, in The New York Times‎:

     But Harry, in his civilian suit, was also a reminder of the schism between the traditional and the modern in the royal family that can’t be drowned out by pageantry.