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/stˈaɪflɪŋ/ /stˈaɪfəlɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Stifle v. t. (past & past part. stifled; pres. part. stifling)

To stop the breath of by crowding something into the windpipe, or introducing an irrespirable substance into the lungs; to choke; to suffocate; to cause the death of by such means; as, to stifle one with smoke or dust. "Stifled with kisses, a sweet death he dies." "I took my leave, being half stifled with the closeness of the room."

To stop; to extinguish; to deaden; to quench; as, to stifle the breath; to stifle a fire or flame. "Bodies... stifle in themselves the rays which they do not reflect or transmit."

To suppress the manifestation or report of; to smother; to conceal from public knowledge; as, to stifle a story; to stifle passion. "I desire only to have things fairly represented as they really are; no evidence smothered or stifled."

Stifle v. i. To die by reason of obstruction of the breath, or because some noxious substance prevents respiration. "You shall stifle in your own report."

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Etymology of 'Stifling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books

... but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!" he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere, stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!" The intellectual isolation of his sect preyed upon ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... even in the pain of the night that followed, when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her arms about her, and held her in ...

— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... the shade of a toadstool. It was a stifling, sultry day. And having come up into the garden on some errand or other, Grandfather Mole had found the sunshine upon his back altogether too hot for ...

— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey

... of the slums of Boston, till it must have looked to our neighbors as if we meant to go on forever exploring the underworld. But we found a short-cut—we found a short-cut! And the route we took from the tenements of the stifling alleys to a darling cottage of our own, where the sun shines in at every window, and the green grass runs up to our very doorstep, was surveyed by the Pilgrim Fathers, who trans-scribed their field notes on a very fine parchment and called ...

— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... A sensation of stifling, as if her throat were closing together, oppressed her suddenly, and picking up her hand-bag, she ran downstairs and out of ...

— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

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