verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
smother the flames (= put something over them to make them stop burning )
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Barry smothered the flames with a blanket.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
flame
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Office worker Bryan Johnson tore off his own shirt to smother the flames .
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Police officers also tried to smother the flames with their jackets as Mr Griffiths lay next to his car.
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Office worker Bryan Johnson managed to knock Mr Chittenden to the floor, tearing off his own shirt to smother the flames .
kiss
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She laughed and screamed until I had to smother her mouth with kisses .
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In bed at last, believing and disbelieving, she turned her face delightedly into the pillows, smothering her certainty of kisses .
■ VERB
try
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In the pew opposite Willie were two ginger-haired girls trying to smother their giggles.
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Alison says the poltergeist has tried to smother her boyfriend in their terraced house.
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She whipped these out to try and smother the blaze, her eyes smarting with the smoke.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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I grabbed a blanket and tried to smother the flames.
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I had to end it with Tim - I felt like I was being smothered.
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If the victim's clothes are burning, use a blanket to smother the flames.
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Nancy smothered a smile.
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The Phillies' Curt Schilling smothered the Blue Jays, 5-0.
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When she was 18, she smothered her 11-month-old daughter.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Caliph Marwan Ibn al-Hakam: smothered by his wife, Umm Khalid.
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He flipped and stirred, measuring lumps of rice on to plates which he then smothered with a brownish stroganoff.
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It smothered him like dense mist.
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One girl in the ambulance was smothered in blood.
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The story - and, apparently, the memory - had been smothered by greater horrors.
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The streets of the resort were clotted with cars and smothered in the smell of fried food and sun tan lotion.
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Though prawns are low in calories, they are then smothered in a dressing loaded with them.