put a damper on
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To spoil or depress something
Literally: reduce fire with water
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
So that put the damper on gigs for a bit.
’ Anyroad, ' er and oor George is over t'moon, so don't put a damper on.’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “put a damper on” mean?
To spoil or depress something Literally: reduce fire with water
Is “put a damper on” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.