press-, presso-, pressi-, -prim-, -prin-

(Latin: push lower, bear down on or against)

suppress (verb), suppresses; suppressed; suppressing
1. To stop or to end something by force or by an authority: The student demonstration for better living conditions on campus was quickly suppressed by the college administrators.
2. To prevent something from being known; to keep secret: The results of the test for Mrs. Smith's classes were suppressed until all of the tests from all the other groups were corrected and graded.
3. To withhold one's feelings or reactions: Jack could not suppress his anger any longer at his sister who broke his cell phone, and so he yelled at her about it.
4. To end or inhibit the bodily functions caused by drugs, an illness, etc.: Radiation can certainly suppress the reproduction and growth of cancerous cells in a person's body.
5. To consciously hinder or restrain an unpleasant memory or idea and avoid pondering or reflecting on it: In order to ward off and suppress the recollections of her mother passing away so suddenly, Mary decided to renovate her living room by wallpapering and painting the walls with bright colors.
6. Etymology: from Latin supprimere "to press down, to stop, to hold back; from sub-, "down" + premere, "to press".
To hold back or to restrain from disclosing.
© ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

suppresser, suppressor
suppressible
suppression (suh PRESH uhn) (s) (noun), suppressions (pl)
1. The state of quenching, putting to an end, or terminating: The suppression of the demonstration in front of the city hall caused many people to be very upset with the officials.
2. The act of withholding by means of silencing, keeping quiet, or concealing: The mayor was eager for the suppression of the evidence regarding his financial activities.
3. The restraint or diminishing of discharges: The suppression of the patient's diarrhea was finally achieved when the doctor was able to curb the patient’s illness.
4. In psychology, the deliberate omission of undesirable thoughts or memories: Nicole was currently working overtime at the office to be in a mode of suppression, shutting out the horrors of the car accident she recently experienced.
suppressionist
suppressive
surge suppressor, surge protector (s) (noun); surge suppressors; surge protectors (pl)
A component that responds to the rate of change of an electrical current or voltage: A surge suppressor prevents damage from a sudden fluctuation in electrical power, especially a large increase above a predetermined value.

A surge suppressor is often used to protect computer systems and other electronic equipment.

surprint
1. Something added by overprinting.
2. To print (additional marks, a new address, etc.) over something already printed.
teleprinter
thermal vapor compression (TVC) (s) (noun), thermal vapor compressions (pl)
A process used to remove salt from seawater, by evaporating it through a fine mesh filter that traps the brine particles so that the fluid can then be condensed into a relatively salt-free solution.
thermocompression
In mechanics, any process involving both heat and pressure.
venopressor
vitropressure, vitropression
A diascopy or an examination of a skin lesion in which the blood is temporarily excluded from the lesion with a firm pressure on the area of study by using a glass slide or other transparent material.

Excluding the blood from the area facilitates the detection of cellular and other deposits in the dermis (skin).

voiceprint (s) (noun), voiceprints (pl)
1. When recording a person’s voice electronically, and representing it in a graphic form, a person can be biometrically identified: It is interesting that no two people in the world have the same voiceprint, just as no two people have the same fingerprints.
2. A representation in a graph form of the frequencies that make up someone's voice: In voiceprint, usually the rate of occurrence of a person’s speech is plotted on the vertical and the time is located on the horizontal axis.

The voiceprint the police used to identify the man who had spoken on the victim’s answering machine was very helpful in solving the crime that was committed on the weekend.