to smother with love
- idiom
- Informal
:
ahogar con amor
- After her long trip, she smothered her dog with love when she returned home.
Examples
-
The grandmother smothered her granddaughter with love during the family gathering.
-
I was smothered with love.
Fiction book (2002) -
He felt overwhelmed as his friends smothered him with love on his birthday.
Synonyms
37
6.4
Treat someone with too much care so they become less independent
30
6.0
To treat someone with too much care and make things too easy for them
18
7.7
To show too much love for someone or something
6
8.8
To treat someone with too much care so they do not learn to help themselves
4
7.0
Praise a person or thing in a very excited way
3
6.7
To give someone too much kindness and gifts so they expect special treatment
To act silly and very loving when you see something cute
Antonyms
How Affectionate
- Informal
70
3.7
42
3.7
18
7.7
3
2.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'smother' (to stifle or suffocate) combined with the instrument 'with' and 'love' clearly yields the idea of overwhelming or suffocating someone by means of affection. This figurative mapping is straightforward and common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to derive the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Smother with love comes from the real meaning of smother, which is to cover someone so much they cannot breathe, like putting a blanket over a small fire. So smother with love means 'to overwhelm someone with too much affection'.