suffocate

About 0.27 uses per million words.

Meaning

1. verb To suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.

   Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!

2. verb To die due to, or kill someone by means of, insufficient oxygen supply to the body.

   He suffocated his wife by holding a pillow over her head.

3. verb To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.

   I'm suffocating under this huge workload.

4. verb To destroy; to extinguish.

   to suffocate fire

5. adjective Suffocated, choked.
6. adjective Smothered, overwhelmed.

Similar words

asphyxiate smother choke gag stifle strangle crush squeeze kill quell

Often followed by

the in him me her and them it or

Word family

suffocated suffocates suffocating suffocation suffocations suffocative