Smother vs Choke - What's the difference?
smother | choke |
To suffocate; stifle; obstruct, more or less completely, the respiration of.
To extinguish or deaden, as fire, by covering, overlaying, or otherwise excluding the air: as, to smother a fire with ashes.
To reduce to a low degree of vigor or activity; suppress or do away with; extinguish; stifle; cover up; conceal; hide: as, the committee's report was smothered.
In cookery: to cook in a close dish: as, beefsteak smothered with onions.
To daub or smear.
To be suffocated.
To breathe with great difficulty by reason of smoke, dust, close covering or wrapping, or the like.
Of a fire: to burn very slowly for want of air; smolder.
Figuratively: to perish, grow feeble, or decline, by suppression or concealment; be stifled; be suppressed or concealed.
(soccer) To get in the way of a kick of the ball
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=December 27
, author=Mike Henson
, title=Norwich 0 - 2 Tottenham
, work=BBC Sport
(Australian rules football) To get in the way of a kick of the ball, preventing it going very far. When a player is kicking the ball, an opponent who is close enough will reach out with his hands and arms to get over the top of it, so the ball hits his hands after leaving the kicker's boot, dribbling away.
That which smothers or appears to smother, particularly
# Smoldering; slow combustion
# Cookware used in such cooking
# The state of being stifled; suppression.
#* Francis Bacon
# Stifling smoke; thick dust.
# (Australian rules football) The act of smothering a kick (see above).
To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe, for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way.
To prevent someone from breathing by strangling or filling the windpipe.
* Shakespeare
To obstruct by filling up or clogging any passage; to block up.
To hinder or check, as growth, expansion, progress, etc.; to stifle.
* Dryden
(intransitive, fluid mechanics, of a duct) to reach a condition of maximum flowrate, due to the flow at the narrowest point of the duct becoming sonic (Ma = 1).
To perform badly at a crucial stage of a competition because one is nervous, especially when one is winning.
To move one's fingers very close to the tip of a pencil, brush or other art tool.
To be checked, as if by choking; to stick.
* Sir Walter Scott
To affect with a sense of strangulation by passion or strong feeling.
* Jonathan Swift
To make a choke, as in a cartridge, or in the bore of the barrel of a shotgun.
A control on a carburetor to adjust the air/fuel mixture when the engine is cold.
(sports) In wrestling, karate (etc.), a type of hold that can result in strangulation.
A constriction at the muzzle end of a shotgun barrel which affects the spread of the shot.
A partial or complete blockage (of boulders, mud, etc.) in a cave passage.
The mass of immature florets in the centre of the bud of an artichoke.
In lang=en terms the difference between smother and choke
is that smother is figuratively: to perish, grow feeble, or decline, by suppression or concealment; be stifled; be suppressed or concealed while choke is to perform badly at a crucial stage of a competition because one is nervous, especially when one is winning.As verbs the difference between smother and choke
is that smother is to suffocate; stifle; obstruct, more or less completely, the respiration of while choke is to be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe, for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way.As nouns the difference between smother and choke
is that smother is that which smothers or appears to smother, particularly while choke is a control on a carburetor to adjust the air/fuel mixture when the engine is cold.smother
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete)Etymology 1
From (etyl) smothren, smortheren, alteration (due to smother, .Verb
(en verb)citation, page= , passage=Emmanuel Adebayor's touch proved a fraction heavy as he guided Van der Vaart's exquisite long ball round John Ruddy, before the goalkeeper did well to smother Bale's shot from Modric's weighted pass.}}
Etymology 2
From (etyl) smother, .Noun
(en noun)- not to keep their suspicions in smother
- (Shakespeare)
References
*Anagrams
* *choke
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete) * (l) (obsolete) * (l) (dialectal)Verb
(chok)- With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.
- to choke a cave passage with boulders and mud
- (Addison)
- Oats and darnel choke the rising corn.
- The words choked in his throat.
- I was choked at this word.