Originally Posted by Duragrouch

Yes, dampen is very often used in those contexts, such as to dampen enthusiasm, analogous to "raining on your parade", drowning a good idea, extinguishing a fire (or idea) with water.

Similarly, dampener is something that can make something wet or quell enthusiasm like noted above, whereas damper is a device to reduce motion or energy, or flow, like a furnace damper.

No worries. I was one of those people who referred to casual cotton twill slacks as "khakis", until I heard the enlightening quote I mentioned. I hope you took my comment in a friendly way. But I can definitely understand issues with language translation; Though I have an ear for accents, I have a terrible mind for vocabulary in a foreign language, that has prevented my achieving any level of fluency in any of them.

And listen, the USA has had leaders in government who pronounced "nuclear" (new-clee-ur) as "nucular". So I'm very impressed with your knowledge and command of english, compared to my zero knowledge of your language (from your profile, Serbian?).