What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Smouldered vs Smothered - What's the difference?

smouldered | smothered |

As verbs the difference between smouldered and smothered

is that smouldered is past tense of smoulder while smothered is past tense of smother.

smouldered

English

Verb

(head)
  • (smoulder)

  • smoulder

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • * 1895 , H. G. Wells, The Time Machine Chapter XI
  • *:I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing in the absence of man and in a temperate climate, flames must be. The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn even when focussed by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this again rarely results in flames. Now, in this decadent age the art of fire-making had been altogether forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.
  • (obsolete) To smother; to suffocate; to choke.
  • (Holinshed)
    (Palsgrave)

    Noun

  • (obsolete) smoke; smother
  • * Gascoigne
  • The smoulder stops our nose with stench.

    Anagrams

    * *

    smothered

    English

    Verb

    (head)
  • (smother)

  • smother

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (l) (obsolete)

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) smothren, smortheren, alteration (due to smother, .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • 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 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.}}
  • (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.
  • Etymology 2

    From (etyl) smother, .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • That which smothers or appears to smother, particularly
  • # Smoldering; slow combustion
  • # Cookware used in such cooking
  • # The state of being stifled; suppression.
  • #* Francis Bacon
  • not to keep their suspicions in smother
  • # Stifling smoke; thick dust.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • # (Australian rules football) The act of smothering a kick (see above).
  • References

    *

    Anagrams

    * *