Dictionary

damper

Pronunciation

Noun

damper (plural dampers)

Something that damps or checks:
1. A valve or movable plate in the flue or other part of a stove, furnace, etc., used to check or regulate the draught of air.
2. A contrivance (sordine), as in a pianoforte, to deaden vibrations; or, as in other pieces of mechanism, to check some action at a particular time.
3. Something that kills the mood.
  - W. Black
    Nor did Sabrina′s presence seem to act as any damper at the modest little festivities.
4. A device that decreases the oscillations of a system.
(chiefly, Australia) Bread made from a basic recipe of flour, water, milk, and salt, but without yeast.
- 1827, Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, ii.190, quoted in G. A. Wilkes, A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, 1978, ISBN 0-424-00034-2,
  The farm-men usually bake their flour into flat cakes, which they call dampers, and cook these in the ashes.
- 1938, William Ferguson and John Patten, ‘Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights!’, in Heiss & Minter (eds.), Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 31:
  You hypocritically claim that you are trying to ‘protect’ us; but your modern policy of ‘protection’ (so-called) is killing us off just as surely as the pioneer policy of giving us poisoned damper and shooting us down like dingoes!

Translations

Translations

Adjective

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