Other forms: smothers, smothered, smothering
To smother is to cover something so thickly that it cannot breathe or burn. A blanket over a fire, or a hand over a face.
The fire sense is practical, since smothering a pan fire with a lid is the correct response and water is the wrong one. The human sense is suffocation. There is a figurative use about affection, since smothering somebody means loving them so closely that they cannot move, and it is a real complaint. Cooking uses it too, so chops smothered in onions are buried in them.
1verbsmotherTo cover something thickly so that air cannot reach it.
“Smother the flames with a damp cloth.”
2verboverwhelmTo overwhelm somebody with attention.
“She loved them without ever seeming to smother them.”
Also accepted in games: suffocate
Smother was smoke. The Middle English noun smorther meant dense smoke or a suffocating vapour, and it reshaped the older verb smoren, to suffocate, into the word we use now.
Middle English
smothren
English, today
smother
Built from
From Middle English smothren, smortheren, alteration (due to smother, smorther (“a suffocating vapour, dense smoke”)) of Middle English smoren (“to smother”), from Old English smorian (“to smother, suffocate, choke”), from Proto-West Germanic smorōn, from Proto-Germanic smurōną (“to suffocate, strangle”), probably related to smallijan (“to burn”) or Old English smoca (“smoke”). Cognate with Middle Low German smoren, smurten (“to choke, suffocate”), vls smoren (“to smoke, reek”), Dutch smoren (“to suffocate, smother", also "to stew, simmer”), German schmoren (“to stew, simmer, braise”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word