The house where her parents have kept the girl and her six siblings hostage is isolated and remote. … I kept wanting to read “Girl A” as a fairy tale or parable, to cauterize some of the suffering in its pages, but Dean resists that impulse at every turn. (Flynn Berry, “What Happens to Siblings Who Survive a House of Horrors?” The New York Times, 2/2/2021.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for dull, dampen, soften or reduce.