Smother vs Stifling - What's the difference?
smother | stifling |
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).
That stifles.
:The heat was stifling ; it seemed hard to breathe and the exertion of rolling over on the bed seemed too much.
The act by which something is stifled.
* 1857 , Henry Clay Fish, Pulpit eloquence of the nineteenth century (page 507)
As verbs the difference between smother and stifling
is that smother is to suffocate; stifle; obstruct, more or less completely, the respiration of while stifling is .As nouns the difference between smother and stifling
is that smother is that which smothers or appears to smother, particularly while stifling is the act by which something is stifled.As an adjective stifling is
that stifles.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
* *stifling
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Verb
(head)Noun
(en noun)- Every man who is destroyed must destroy himself. When a man stifles an admonition of conscience, he may fairly be said to sow the stiflings of conscience.