(v. t.) To destroy the life of by suffocation; to deprive of the air necessary for life; to cover up closely so as to prevent breathing; to suffocate; as, to smother a child.
(v. t.) To affect as by suffocation; to stife; to deprive of air by a thick covering, as of ashes, of smoke, or the like; as, to smother a fire.
(v. t.) Hence, to repress the action of; to cover from public view; to suppress; to conceal; as, to smother one's displeasure.
(v. i.) To be suffocated or stifled.
(v. i.) To burn slowly, without sufficient air; to smolder.
(v. t.) Stifling smoke; thick dust.
(v. t.) A state of suppression.
Example Sentences:
(1) As attorneys who practice asylum law, we believe deeply in our nation’s obligation to provide real protection to refugees, but the Obama administration’s willful disregard of existing asylum laws and procedures – and its smothering of due process with detention and rapid deportation – is truly appalling.
(2) Brad Guzan produced a superb save to deny Ayew, rushing off his line to smother a left-foot shot from six yards out, and 33 seconds later the Swansea forward’s brother had the ball in the net at the other end.
(3) Conveniently, it is not far from the Via Algarviana , allowing us to leave the car and hike the stretch to Alte (16km), passing shuttered houses smothered in creepers in old, abandoned villages.
(4) Buffon's understudy Marchetti gets down brilliantly to smother the cross.
(5) Instead, the least attractive aspects of London 2012, the ZiL lanes and the Visa-only policy and McDonald's and Coca-Cola as purveyors of sustenance to a sporting nation, were smothered not only by the competition but by the ocean of good humour fostered by the joviality of the volunteers, the inspirational architecture and the attention given to the natural landscape (with apologies to those who had to move to make room for it all).
(6) Later, when it was realised that pieces of aluminium and magnesium among this waste could catch fire and cause widespread contamination, inert argon gas had to be pumped in to smother potential blazes.
(7) Updated at 5.30pm BST 5.13pm BST Game and second set to Roger Federer Rewind the clocks and smother the future , the venerable Roger Federer isn't Wimbledon history yet.
(8) Our descent into Delhi was delayed because of fog, we were told, but the nicotine-coloured blanket smothering this dynamic Indian city was a malignant smog.
(9) Bayern are braced for their visitors to employ similar tactics to those that deflated Barcelona in their semi-final, a smothering defence and bite on the break game-plan that has drawn local criticism in print from Günter Netzer and Matthias Sammer.
(10) The wall of ice that rises behind Sermilik fjord stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400km) from north to south and smothers 80% of this country.
(11) The decision by the MP for Mid Bedfordshire to become the first serving MP to take part in the show, which features famous faces performing in stunts that in the past have included being smothered in insects and eating a kangaroo's penis, could keep her from parliamentary and constituency business for a month.
(12) Hazard is sent off for kicking the ball under a ballboy attempting to smother the ball rather than return it.
(13) The forward bustled in, stealing the ball and holding off the centre-half as he attempted to wrest it back, before ripping a glorious shot from a horribly tight angle into the far top corner as Ben Foster edged out to smother.
(14) He's never quite in control, though, and his attempted lift into the net is smothered by the outrushing Ospina.
(15) Before he came to the UK, Darius trained in Poland, learning how to perform a cut-throat shave by smothering an inflated balloon in shaving foam and then removing it with a single blade.
(16) Sediment can smother seagrasses, which are the key food source of dugongs and sea turtles, and damage corals.
(17) White supremacy in America won’t let our black young children be kids, swim or receive congratulations while graduating without having the breath, light and life smothered right out of them.
(18) Liverpool had threatened only sporadically, although Kasper Schmeichel did make a decent save to smother Coutinho’s shot.
(19) The Quagga mussel ( Dreissena rostriformis bugensis ), which was found in the river Wraysbury on 1 October and can cover boat hulls and smother native mussels to death, is just one of a group of freshwater species that has been spreading westward from the Ponto-Caspian region in south-east Europe in recent years and which risk causing a “meltdown” as they invade Britain.
(20) It added: "We have long argued that stamp duty is a tax on aspiration that smothered the natural demand of the market.
Spoil
Definition:
(v. t.) To plunder; to strip by violence; to pillage; to rob; -- with of before the name of the thing taken; as, to spoil one of his goods or possession.
(v. t.) To seize by violence;; to take by force; to plunder.
(v. t.) To cause to decay and perish; to corrput; to vitiate; to mar.
(v. t.) To render useless by injury; to injure fatally; to ruin; to destroy; as, to spoil paper; to have the crops spoiled by insects; to spoil the eyes by reading.
(v. i.) To practice plunder or robbery.
(v. i.) To lose the valuable qualities; to be corrupted; to decay; as, fruit will soon spoil in warm weather.
(n.) That which is taken from another by violence; especially, the plunder taken from an enemy; pillage; booty.
(n.) Public offices and their emoluments regarded as the peculiar property of a successful party or faction, to be bestowed for its own advantage; -- commonly in the plural; as to the victor belong the spoils.
(n.) That which is gained by strength or effort.
(n.) The act or practice of plundering; robbery; aste.
(n.) Corruption; cause of corruption.
(n.) The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal.
Example Sentences:
(1) The Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli said she would not let comments about her appearance by the BBC presenter John Inverdale spoil the greatest day of her life.
(2) In a ruling rejecting any claims to the "spoils of war," New York's highest court concluded Thursday that an ancient gold tablet must be returned to the German museum that lost it in the Second world war .
(3) Acanthamoeba culbertsoni was isolated from a sewage-spoil dump site near Ambrose Light, New York Bight.
(4) We tested 1,145 isolates from fresh and spoiling irradiated (0.0, 0.3, and 0.6 Mrad) yellow perch fillets for proteolytic activity, by the use of both media.
(5) The few who enjoy themselves thoughtlessly, going against the green Glastonbury ethos , spoil it for the many.
(6) Spoiled fish of the families, Scombridae and Scomberesocidae (e.g.
(7) Spoiling periods of ca 1-2 ms with driving currents of ca 0.5-1.0 A are predicted to be adequate for surface-spoiling experiments with rat, e.g., for noninvasive monitoring of liver.
(8) Magnetic resonance arteriograms of healthy volunteers and selected patients were produced with a new spoiled gradient-echo pulse sequence based on time-of-flight phenomena.
(9) In the spoiled samples, the highest total counts were 820 million in buttermilk biscuits.
(10) Hagenbeck’s zoo would be a celebration of the German colonial project and its spoils, from German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) to German East Africa (present-day Burundi, Rwanda and mainland Tanzania).
(11) Facebook Twitter Pinterest The spoils of war: pro-Russia rebels recover a tank (left) abandoned by retreating Ukrainian troops.
(12) Deliberately spoiled mackerel samples and mackerel samples implicated in outbreaks of scombrotoxicosis were, under medical supervision, tested blind on normal, healthy volunteers of both sexes.
(13) So far the Republican primary has spoiled us, from Rick Perry's "oops" to corporate asset-stripper Mitt Romney's admission that he liked firing people, delivered just before he was snapped apparently receiving a sit-down shoe-shine from an underling – not a good look for a would-be man of the people.
(14) Magnetic resonance angiography of the pulmonary vasculature was evaluated in 12 subjects using breath-hold gradient echo scans and surface coils at 1.5 T. Flow-compensated GRASS, spoiled GRASS (SPGR), and WARP-SPGR sequences were utilized.
(15) Mawer said some junior members may have been paid a fee, with bigger fish getting a share of the spoils.
(16) This magnificent quintet of gems was, alas, the sum total of the factual and subjective spoils of which the committee was able to relieve him over two-and-a-half long hours.
(17) Economics didn't start out trying to spoil our fun.
(18) Sid Ward, teacher, 38, Kingsbridge, Devon (now living in Herefordshire) ‘Properties are empty, so the community is empty’ Second homes destroy the fabric of the town and spoil the very things that made it attractive to the second home owner in the first place.
(19) But Pence, close observers said, simply advocated such ideas ahead of their time, at a moment when Republican leadership still feared that the “war on women” label would spoil their standing with the public in the 2012 election.
(20) The script was written but Burnley spoiled Cole and Lambert’s happy ending.