Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Suppress for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "suppress" — a verb, pronounced /səˈpres/, with the stress on the second syllable.
Narrator: To suppress means to stop something by force, to hold it back, or to prevent it from being expressed or appearing.
Narrator: In plain English, when you suppress something, you push it down or keep it from coming out — a feeling, a sound, a report, a rebellion.
Narrator: You can suppress a laugh, suppress the truth, suppress a cough, or suppress an uprising — always a holding-down or shutting-out.
Narrator: The word comes from the Latin "supprimere", from "sub" meaning under, and "premere" meaning to press — to press under.
Narrator: That root "premere" also gives us press, pressure, and compress — all about pushing and squeezing.
Narrator: It entered English in the fourteenth century, carrying senses from gentle restraint to forceful crushing.
Narrator: In tone it ranges from neutral and technical to strong and political — suppressing a yawn is mild, suppressing dissent is grave.
Narrator: So remember: to suppress is to press down — to hold back, silence, or prevent something from coming out.
Speaker A: I had to suppress a laugh in the meeting — the whole thing was so absurd.
Speaker B: Ha, that's the mild sense — to suppress a laugh, hold it back so it doesn't burst out.
Speaker A: Exactly. Though suppress can be much heavier too — governments suppressing the truth, for instance.
Speaker B: Right, that's the grave sense — silencing or crushing something by force.
Speaker A: Same word, huge range. From a giggle to a rebellion.
Speaker B: A common mistake is confusing suppress with repress — they overlap but differ subtly.
Speaker A: Ah, how exactly?
Speaker B: Suppress is usually conscious — you deliberately hold something back. Repress is often unconscious, buried without realising.
Speaker A: Good distinction. So you suppress a yawn on purpose, but you repress a painful memory without knowing.
Speaker B: Exactly. Close synonyms? 'Stifle', 'quell', and 'restrain' are near, each with its own shade.
Speaker A: So suppress means to press down deliberately — to hold back or prevent from showing.
Speaker B: From the quiet to the forceful, always a pushing-under.
Speaker B: Let's use "suppress" in AI prompts — it is precise for hiding noise, silencing errors gracefully, and controlling what appears in output or logs.
Speaker A: So suppress in a prompt means deliberately hold something back from showing?
Speaker B: Exactly. For cleaning up logs, you'd write:
Prompt: Suppress the noisy warnings in my console. Keep real errors visible, but suppress the repetitive deprecation notices and third-party chatter, so the log stays clean and only shows what genuinely matters.
Speaker B: The word suppress tells the AI to hold back the noise without losing the important signals.
Speaker A: Very practical. What about notifications?
Speaker B: Try this:
Prompt: Add a suppress setting to my notifications. Let users suppress non-urgent alerts during focus hours, holding them back quietly and delivering them in one calm summary later instead of interrupting.
Speaker A: So it silences interruptions gracefully.
Speaker B: Right. For error handling:
Prompt: Suppress raw error details from users. Catch every exception, log the full trace privately, and suppress the technical message on screen — showing only a calm, friendly note instead of a scary stack trace.
Speaker A: What about a UI feature?
Speaker B: Here you go:
Prompt: Suppress duplicate toasts in my app. If the same message fires twice within a few seconds, suppress the repeat so the user sees it once cleanly, never a stack of identical popups piling up.
Speaker A: Could suppress help with rate limiting too?
Speaker B: Yes:
Prompt: Suppress excess requests to my API. When a client exceeds the limit, suppress the extra calls quietly with a clear message, holding back the flood so the server stays healthy and responsive for everyone.
Speaker A: So "suppress" means deliberately hold back — noise, errors, or excess.
Speaker B: Exactly — a precise word that gives the AI clean control over what surfaces and what stays down.
Suppress — meaning in Arabic & definition More S courses GL Dictionary