defuse

verb

1. (transitive)To remove the fuse from (e.g. a bomb).

   “Shepard: I wear a lot of hats, Mr. Vargas. Some days I shut down criminals. Some days I defuse nukes. Some days I like to enjoy private vices. You understand me?”

2. (figuratively, transitive)To make less dangerous, tense, or hostile.

   “to defuse a hostage situation”

   “In recent months, those tactics have come to include defensive maneuvers aimed at defusing the media counteroperations of the United States and its allies.”

   “As a result of the Santiago Principles and other parallel efforts at education such as the SWF scoreboard that I have featured in my research, a substantial amount of distrust surrounding SWFs has been defused.”

   “Shaken by the biggest challenge to their authority in years, Brazil’s leaders made conciliatory gestures on Tuesday to try to defuse the protests engulfing the nation’s cities.”

   “Defying this, Western queer culture actively defuses from cisnormative values, yet in so doing may also fuse with their new, queernormative value constructs.”

3. (obsolete)To disorder; to make shapeless.

   “If but as well I other accents borrow / That can my speech defuse,”