1Die or cause to die from lack of air or inability to breathe.

1. 1.1 Have or cause to have difficulty in breathing.
   no object he was suffocating, his head jammed up against the back of the sofa

   with object you're suffocating me—I can scarcely breathe

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Their stench was suffocating at close range, and the ground trembled beneath each thunderous footstep.
   • This remarkable evocation of childhood is set in an Italian hamlet during the hottest summer on record - the suffocating heat a perfect backdrop to the claustrophobic tension of the story.
   • An aching in my chest, so intense, so powerful and paralysing: I was suffocating, couldn't breathe, smoke was filling my mouth.
   • The air was close and suffocating in the black car, as she drove aimlessly down the interstate, trying to flee from all her memories and the life that was sucking all the wants and needs from her that once made her happy.
   • He held her so close she nearly suffocated on his jacket.
   • Exhaust fumes from cars and factories make for a toxic, suffocating smog that hangs over the city.
   • Scheele described the chlorine gas formed as having a greenish yellow color and a suffocating odor ‘most oppressive to the lungs.’
   • In the opinion of these writers, sleepers in stuffy rooms were slowly suffocating in a toxic fog of their own breath, sweat, and flatulence.
   • The simplest is that for resuscitating those who have been temporarily suffocated by choking up the throat.
   • His legs had become trapped and the equipment was suffocating him.
   • To complete the whole, the windows were all closed and the air suffocating.
   • The climbers reach the peak after much struggle, but as they make their way back down, the weather closes in with suffocating intensity.
   • Have mercy on me for I am suffocated with this heat.
   • Caked in cracked dirt and seeping sweat, crawling on all fours, suffocating from the heat, and trying to avoid startled lizards and bats, I cannot help but feel that I am glad they widened the tunnels for us.
   • The heat had suddenly become unbearable; he thought he might suffocate at any moment.
   • The muggy, early-September night had descended on the suburban neighborhood, suffocating and heavy.
   • When Logan got off the plane he was completely stifled by the suffocating heat of Michigan.
   • She shuddered remembering the last time she had missed the early bus and how she had had to sit beside some guy wearing so much cologne she thought that she would suffocate from lack of real air.
   • I couldn't breathe, the fumes were suffocating me.
   • Sometimes she would wake at night unable to breathe, terrified she was suffocating.

   Synonyms

   be breathless, be short of air, struggle for air

   be too hot, swelter

   informal roast, bake, boil
2. 1.2 Feel or cause to feel trapped and oppressed.
   he said he'd suffocate if he remained in this house for another hour

   Example sentencesExamples

   • One gruesome scene is shot behind an oppressive red filter, visually suffocating the viewer.
   • Each small change is difficult to argue against but the overall effect is suffocating for the people we then expect to provide a decent public service.
   • This feels like improvisation, so naturally have they found the heart of the scores and the recording is excellent as well, close without suffocating the listener or the music, detail with air around it.
   • I felt I was being trapped, suffocated by their delighted chatter and effusion.
   • She couldn't find anything out of order, but sometimes she felt oppressed, suffocated.
   • Although, the holes in the watery Wicklow defence were initially plugged, the problem of their inability to create scoreable chances was still suffocating their performance.
   • Perhaps David and his like will only be happy when they are known as ‘Citizen 326789’ or some similar Orwellian label that suffocates what remains of individual freedom.
   • What one generation considers the very definition of success - a steady job and a roof over one's head - the next often finds constricting, if not suffocating.
   • What Maryna is leaving behind is not obscurity but an oppressive, suffocating fame; not poverty but tiresome social privilege.
   • Almost everybody used it, in every conceivable situation, and constantly, in such a way as would oppress and suffocate us could we go back in time and live in that environment.
   • He felt like he was suffocating under his father's oppression.
   • In her work she constructs a world that is airless and suffocating.
   • The loneliness that had been pervading my life and slowly suffocating me was now lifting, and I could breathe freely again.
   • One gets the sense that he finds the Western episteme constraining, if not suffocating, in its insistence upon the ideological hold and closure of meaning.
   • Between them, they have so eroded Kate's confidence and self-esteem that she is incapable of taking control of her own life, and she is trapped in an increasingly suffocating existence as she grows to adulthood.
   • The agency also places suffocating constrictions on the press vis-à-vis the Imperial Family.
   • The courtyard was completely silent, as it had been earlier, but now the silence seemed oppressive, suffocating.
   • The film's entertainment value is suffocated and the lack of individual character development means that the viewer's empathy in these heart-rending scenes is nonexistent.
   • Kids today are rarely allowed to follow their imaginations outdoors without close, almost suffocating, supervision.
   • Trapped, suffocating, and every other clichéd word one can look up in the thesaurus to describe being stranded in this small terraced island in the Pacific.