quell vs quench
Definitions
verb
- overcome or allay
- suppress or crush completely
Examples
We must remember that the prime motive for Housmann's boulevards and circuses was to ensure that a strategically placed cannon could fire down many streets, quelling the citizens who were periodically disposed to revolution.
This link is sort of off-topic but really not, as it's yet another case (as in the present one) of the media doing their level best to shout down "the critics" -- the nattering nabobs of negativism -- and then, years later, admitting that the "gadflies" were right all along, and that what looked like a scam, walked like a scam, and quacked like a scam was -- quelle surprise!
Members of the 800th Military Police Brigade had to use lethal force several times to quell prisoner uprisings, the report says.
Definitions
verb
- cool (hot metal) by plunging into cold water or other liquid
- put out, as of fires, flames, or lights
- electronics: suppress (sparking) when the current is cut off in an inductive circuit, or suppress (an oscillation or discharge) in a component or device
- suppress or crush completely
- reduce the degree of (luminescence or phosphorescence) in (excited molecules or a material) by adding a suitable substance
Examples
The freaks of nature displayed here appealed to peoples’ prejudice, their unquenchable curiosity for the outlandish and the unknown, and the paradoxical human attraction and repulsion for the diseased and deformed.
There were still flowers in plenty, pink campion, toadflax, small blue scabious, honeysuckle, and six-inch mushrooms, inedible no doubt, but the blackberries were ripe and juicy enough to quench thirst.
Recovering slowly, with agony, from each of these recurrent blows, his unquenchable exuberance had lived.
