sedate
v.to make someone or something less active, excited, or noisy. You use this when you want to calm a person down or slow down a process.
v.to reduce the activity, excitement, or intensity of something. Often used in medical contexts to describe the administration of a drug to calm a patient, or in social contexts to describe the calming of a crowd.
“The doctor gave him a pill to sedate him before the procedure.”
“The police used loudspeakers to sedate the crowd and prevent any further violence in the square.”
“While the initial phase of the project was marked by high energy and rapid prototyping, the management team eventually had to sedate the process to ensure a more rigorous testing phase.”
The verb is first attested in 1646, the adjective in 1661; borrowed from Latin sēdātus, perfect passive participle of sēdō (“to settle”), see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.