In this paper, we consider the following initial-boundary value problem $$\left\}\begin{array}{c}{u}_{tt}(x,t)=\epsilon Lu(x,t)+f\left(u(x,t)\right)\text{in}\Omega \times (0,T),\hfill \\ u(x,t)=0\text{on}\partial \Omega \times (0,T),\hfill \\ u(x,0)=0\text{in}\Omega ,\hfill \\ u_t(x,0)=0\text{in}\Omega ,\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ where $\Omega$ is a bounded domain in ${ℝ}^N$ with smooth boundary $\partial \Omega$, $L$ is an elliptic operator, $\epsilon$ is a positive parameter, $f\left(s\right)$ is a positive, increasing, convex function for $s\in (-\infty ,b)$, ${lim}_{s\to b}f\left(s\right)=\infty$ and ${\int }_0^b\frac{ds}{f\left(s\right)}<\infty$ with $b=const>0$. Under some assumptions, we show that the solution of the above problem quenches in a finite time and its quenching time goes to that of the solution of the following differential equation $$\left\}\begin{array}{cc}{\alpha }^{\text{'}\text{'}}\left(t\right)=f\left(\alpha \left(t\right)\right),\hfill & t>0,\hfill \\ \alpha \left(0\right)=0,{\alpha }^{\text{'}}\left(0\right)=0,\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ as $\epsilon$ goes to zero. We also show that the above result remains...