Still, fears of creating dead zones have been muted in Manhattan, where congestion routinely trumps desolation as an urban crisis and where, as a result, some residents actually prefer the sense of solitude.
Perhaps it's the sheer scale of the room, with its towering corniced ceiling and tall windows looking out across Waterloo Bridge, but it feels like a dead space, decorated in muted, heritage grey and a splash of mustard velvet – Eurostar colours, according to my lunch guest, Alexei Sayle.
Sharp 'thonks' or cracks indicate live wood, while dead wood sounds hollow or muted.
9.40pm BST You know, Shaun of the Dead is quite a lot more muted than I remember.
Their internecine rampage, with hundreds dead, amplifies the civilized disorders and muted (not always) violence of the world they perch, cluster and swoop over.
7 Muted Called on sound mute.
Compared to, say, Bet Lynch's - a rather muted affair, as the groom dropped dead.
Killtron chimed in about the City's slowed yet not muted heartbeat: "Surely New York City is not dead.
Keeler's power was muted by playing his career in the Dead Ball era.
David plays down his desire for vengeance, and Hemsworth's performance is so muted that when the issue of the dead father is brought up at the end, you might be forgiven for thinking: "Oh yeah, forgot about all that".
