stifle
Other forms: stifled; stifles
To stifle is to cut off, hold back, or smother. You may stifle your cough if you don't want to interrupt a lecture or you may stifle the competition if you fear losing.
The verb stifle means “to choke, suffocate, drown.” It can describe a claustrophobic feeling, like getting smothered by kisses from your great aunt. At its most extreme, stifle means to kill by cutting off respiration. The metaphoric sense of stifle didn’t develop until well after the word was first recorded as a verb: "I can always tell — but never let on for fear of damaging his ego — that my boyfriend attempts to stifle tears during sappy parts of movies; his eyes well up at the corners and he’ll sniffle uncontrollably, claiming allergies."
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impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of
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smother or suppress
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be asphyxiated; die from lack of oxygen
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synonyms:
asphyxiate, suffocate
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asphyxiate, smother, suffocate
deprive of oxygen and prevent from breathing
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types:
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strangle
die from strangulation
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type of:
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buy the farm, cash in one's chips, choke, conk, croak, decease, die, drop dead, exit, expire, give-up the ghost, go, kick the bucket, pass, pass away, perish, pop off, snuff it
pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life
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asphyxiate, smother, suffocate
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joint between the femur and tibia in a quadruped; corresponds to the human knee
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synonyms:
knee
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type of:
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articulatio, articulation, joint
(anatomy) the point of connection between two bones or elements of a skeleton (especially if it allows motion)
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articulatio, articulation, joint
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conceal or hide
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Vocabulary lists containing stifle
In eleven interconnected stories inspired by her family in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States, the author describes the lives of several generations of the Beléns.
During a Hanukkah vacation on the island of Nantucket, sixteen-year-old Shira Barbanel makes a deal with Tyler Nelson to give her flirting lessons in exchange for an introduction to her media executive great-uncle.
With a name that translates into Stout Heart, fifteen-year-old Mafatu, the son of the Great Chief of the Polynesian island of Hikueru, is determined to conquer his fear of the sea.
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