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suffocate

Pronunciation: /ˈsʌfəkeɪt/

The English word “suffocate” has 6 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
  2. To die due to, or kill someone by means of, insufficient oxygen supply to the body.
  3. To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
  4. To destroy; to extinguish.

adjective

  1. Suffocated, choked.
  2. Smothered, overwhelmed.

Etymology

The adjective is first attested in the 1420s, the verb in 1526; from Middle English suffocat(e) (“deprived of air, suffocated”), borrowed from Latin suffōcātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin suffōcō (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from sub- (“under, up to”) + fōx (“throat”, oblique stem in fōc-). Participial usage up until Early Modern English.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.