All 5 Uses of
stifle
in
Atlas Shrugged
- I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind-yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?†
Chpt 3.1 *stifle = suppress (prevent something or decrease its development)
- He jerked her closer, to stifle the sight and his own shudder.†
Chpt 3.4
- People were carting luggage, bundling their children, haggling at ticket windows, the stifled panic of their manner suggesting that what they really wanted to do was to fall down on the ground and scream with terror.†
Chpt 2.5
- the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up-that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.†
Chpt 3.7
- But you stifled, negated, betrayed it.†
Chpt 3.7
Definitions:
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(1)
(stifle as in: stifling the urge) to suppress (prevent something or decrease its development) -- often political freedom
-
(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).