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SMOTHERED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Held in check with difficulty
Example:
suppressed laughter
Synonyms:
smothered; stifled; strangled; suppressed
Classified under:
Similar:
inhibited (held back or restrained or prevented)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Completely covered
Example:
smothered chicken is chicken cooked in a seasoned gravy
Classified under:
Similar:
covered (overlaid or spread or topped with or enclosed within something; sometimes used as a combining form)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb smother
Context examples:
“It’s the bloody mate!” was Leach’s crafty answer, strained from him in a smothered sort of way.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The dry-goods stores were not down among the counting-houses, banks, and wholesale warerooms, where gentlemen most do congregate, but Jo found herself in that part of the city before she did a single errand, loitering along as if waiting for someone, examining engineering instruments in one window and samples of wool in another, with most unfeminine interest, tumbling over barrels, being half-smothered by descending bales, and hustled unceremoniously by busy men who looked as if they wondered 'how the deuce she got there'.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient's malady.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
