Smother vs Stifle - What's the difference?
smother | stifle |
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).
A hind knee of various mammals, especially horses.
(veterinary medicine) A bone disease of this region.
To interrupt or cut off.
To repress, keep in or hold back.
* Waterland
* , chapter=15
, title= * {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 29, author=Neil Johnston, work=BBC Sport
, title= To smother or suffocate.
* (John Dryden)
* (Jonathan Swift)
To feel smothered etc.
To die of suffocation.
To treat a silkworm cocoon with steam as part of the process of silk production.
In transitive terms the difference between smother and stifle
is that smother is to daub or smear while stifle is to treat a silkworm cocoon with steam as part of the process of silk production.In intransitive terms the difference between smother and stifle
is that smother is figuratively: to perish, grow feeble, or decline, by suppression or concealment; be stifled; be suppressed or concealed while stifle is to die of suffocation.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
* *stifle
English
Alternative forms
* (l)Noun
(en noun)Verb
(stifl)- I desire only to have things fairly represented as they really are; no evidence smothered or stifled .
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.}}
Norwich 3-3 Blackburn, passage=In fact, there was no suggestion of that, although Wolves deployed men behind the ball to stifle the league leaders in a first-half that proved very frustrating for City.}}
- Stifled with kisses, a sweet death he dies.
- I took my leave, being half stifled with the closeness of the room.
