My mother was born deaf to hearing parents. They didn't know until she was five that she was deaf. She married a hearing man, and had two hearing children. Her deafness was her defining characteristic, although now that she's dead, I realize it never should have been. Not in a "Oh I so regret my life now that my mother has passed" way, more like, we were all blinded by it, fooled into thinking that we had some fathom of what it was like to be her simply by living with her. Like watching the frustration, the suicide attempts, listening to people say things like "No child of a deaf woman could be that smart." and then watching her fade away with a brain tumor gave us any idea. Sheer arrogance from those like my evil grandmother of thank you note fame who told my mother as a child "You can't do that, you're deaf." or like myself who suffered through my mother's naivete bolstered by the sympathy and notoriety that having a handicapped parent provided me.
I'm sitting here in the dark listening to my stereo and realizing that the comfort I get from it through the insomnia was something she never experienced. Her generation was punished for using sign language, taught they had to speak to survive, to fit in. There's a movement against this sort of education in the deaf community, now, but not then. Instead, mom made us sit through every movie with a deaf person in it from Children of a Lesser God to See No Evil, Hear No Evil, in the hopes that we would glean something. I don't think I did.
Helen Keller addressed the parents of deaf children, including my mother's parents, divorcing after they learned of mom's handicap, unable to assign blame. She said that given a choice, she'd rather be blind. My grandmother forever hated her after that one.
My mother got a college degree. Was a great cook. Owned a business. Managed to ask me about my love life three days after brain surgery. Drove me crazy on a regular basis. Was chronically depressed. Occasionally abusive. These things I understand.
And she was deaf. That one remains elusive.

Many people do not realise that the word "deaf" covers a vast spectrum of hearing loss.

It may range from complete (or profound, to use the audiological term) deafness, where nothing at all can be heard, to a very slight hearing loss where one may experience difficulty in catching everything that is being said. Between these two extremes, of course, is a vast range of hearing loss. Very briefly, the range might go like this: profound/severe/moderate. I am severely deaf, which means that I can hear pretty much everything you throw at me with my hearing aids in - right now I can hear the noise of my fingers clattering away on the keyboard, and the faint hum of computers in the background - but once you take out my hearing aids, I can hear nothing except for very low sounds. (This means I can hear you if you're male and you talk right into my ear.)

Of course, this only goes for me, and someone else who describes themselves as severely deaf may hear differently again. I have a friend who is completely deaf in one ear - she has no useful hearing in it at all, and gains no benefit from a hearing aid in that ear - and partially deaf in the other, in which she does have a hearing aid. Like me, she communicates orally, through speech. She is slightly deafer than I am, however, and the telephone for her is not so useful as it is for me. I can manage quite well on the telephone, if you're prepared to spend some time making sure I've got what you said; she can't. She is also much more reliant on lipreading than I.

Deaf [OE. def, deaf, deef, AS. de�xa0;f; akin to D. doof, G. taub, Icel. daufr, Dan. dov, Sw. dof, Goth. daubs, and prob. to E. dumb (the original sense being, dull as applied to one of the senses), and perh. to Gr. (for ) blind, smoke, vapor, folly, and to G. toben to rage. Cf. Dumb.]

1.

Wanting the sense of hearing, either wholly or in part; unable to perceive sounds; hard of hearing; as, a deaf man.

Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf. Shak.

2.

Unwilling to hear or listen; determinedly inattentive; regardless; not to be persuaded as to facts, argument, or exhortation; -- with to; as, deaf to reason.

O, that men's ears should be To counsel deaf, but not to flattery! Shak.

3.

Deprived of the power of hearing; deafened.

Deaf with the noise, I took my hasty flight. Dryden.

4.

Obscurely heard; stifled; deadened.

[R.]

A deaf murmur through the squadron went. Dryden.

5.

Decayed; tasteless; dead; as, a deaf nut; deaf corn.

[Obs. or Prov. Eng.]

Halliwell.

If the season be unkindly and intemperate, they [peppers] will catch a blast; and then the seeds will be deaf, void, light, and naught. Holland.

Deaf and dumb, without the sense of hearing or the faculty of speech. See Deaf-mute.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Deaf

To deafen.

[Obs.]

Dryden.

 

© Webster 1913.