smother

Meanings

Verb

• To suffocate; stifle; obstruct, more or less completely, the respiration of something or someone.
• To extinguish or deaden, as fire, by covering, overlaying, or otherwise excluding the air.
• To reduce to a low degree of vigor or activity; suppress or do away with; extinguish
• In cookery: to cook in a close dish.
• To daub or smear.
• To be suffocated.
• To breathe with great difficulty by reason of smoke, dust, close covering or wrapping, or the like.
• to burn very slowly for want of air; smolder.
• to perish, grow feeble, or decline, by suppression or concealment; be stifled; be suppressed or concealed.
• To get in the way of a kick of the ball.
• 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.

Noun

• That which smothers or appears to smother, particularly

Origin

• From Middle English smothren, smortheren, alteration (due to smother, smorther) of Middle English smoren ("to smother"), from Old English smorian ("to smother, suffocate, choke"), from Proto-Germanic *smurōną ("to suffocate, strangle"). Cognate with Middle Low German smoren, smurten, West Flemish smoren ("to smoke, reek"), Dutch smoren ("to suffocate, smother", also "to stew, simmer"), German schmoren ("to stew, simmer, braise").
• From Middle English smother, smorther, from Old English smorþor ("smoke"), from smorian + -þor.