All 3 Uses of
stifle
in
Moby Dick
- Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars.†
Chpt 25-27 *stifle = suppress (prevent something or decrease its development)
- Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.†
Chpt 7-9 *
- As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long dying spout of the whale.†
Chpt 79-81
Definitions:
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(1)
(stifle as in: stifling the urge) to suppress (prevent something or decrease its development) -- often political freedom
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(2)
(stifle as in: the heat is stifling) to make breathing difficult or impossible -- often from heat or humidity
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(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, to stifle is used in the context of anatomy to refer to a four-legged animal's equivalent of the human knee (the joint between the upper and lower leg).