vix86 Wrote:Is there a hard fast rule on うずめる・うめる〈埋める）?
Can you 穴をうずめる or 穴をうめる?
Can the it be 道がうずめられていた or 道がうめられていた？
The simplest explanation is that うずめる generally has a stronger sense of filling up and covering completely. Technically you can either うめる or うずめる when you fill in a hole in the ground. But the latter might sound too emphatic. It might be better to stick with うめる when you mean the simple opposite of "dig" unless you're sure you're not sounding weird.
Because of the slight difference in meaning, one of the two is much more frequent in certain cases. For example, if you're filling in the blank on a cloze test, うめる works much better. Also, if you're asked to explain something in detail in your own words in an exam, normally what you're supposed to do is うめる. うずめる would carry a negative connotation in such cases, e.g., writing too much with unusually tiny letters. Some pairs of English words seem to make sort of a similar distinction, e.g., pack vs. cram, although the difference between うめる vs. うずめる isn't always a positive vs. negative kind. うずめる carries a negative sense in the above examples because there's no reason to fill up the space to the extent the word うずめる implies.
So, basically うずめる has a more emphatic sense so you use it when you exaggerate or want to emphasize the sense of covering up completely etc. You don't use it for a simple fill-in task like in a cloze test or survey in normal context.
Certain phrases like 顔をうずめる and 骨をうずめる are pretty much fixed, so usually you don't use うめる when you cry into your boyfriend's chest or when you decide to spend the rest of your life in one place.
Also, うめる has certain meanings うずめる doesn't and vice versa. For example, うめる can mean "make up for," "complete something by filling a gap," and the like. So, if a Japanese export company tries to recover a loss due to the current exchange rate by investing in stocks of importers that would benefit from the strong yen, what they're trying to do is 本業で出た損失を株の運用でうめる. The cloze test example can be seen as an example of this sense as well if you see it as filling in the blank in an incomplete sentence (i.e., completing the sentence by filling in the blank).
There is a meaning only うずめる has, and it tends to carry a much stronger sense of covering. But I think its use is more ore less limited to the fixed phrases I said earlier at least in daily conversation between younger folks.
By the way, the point the explanation in a J-J dictionary kitakitsune quoted is trying to convey is not exactly 満たす vs. 覆う. It's more like the fact that うずめる implies "すっかり = completely." So you can't use うずめる if you kind of filled up a hole with dirt.
Also, 覆う is often translated as "to cover (up)." But it doesn't have the negative connotation the English translation tends to imply. So, you should be very careful if you see it as fill vs. cover. The dictionary's explanation uses 覆う because when you fill something up completely, you naturally cover it. It's not hiding or anything like that. It's just complete filling always entails covering in a neutral sense. So you can either うめる or うずめる when you mean a place gets crowded, though the latter may be better because by "crowded" you probably mean there's no space at all in a figurative sense. Also, defining the word as a synonym of うめる with a すっかり覆う sense is pretty neat because it also covers the fixed phrases nicely.
