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Suffocate   /sˈəfəkˌeɪt/   Listen
Suffocate

verb
(past & past part. suffocated; pres. part. suffocating)
1.
Deprive of oxygen and prevent from breathing.  Synonyms: asphyxiate, smother.  "The child suffocated herself with a plastic bag that the parents had left on the floor"
2.
Impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of.  Synonyms: asphyxiate, choke, stifle.
3.
Become stultified, suppressed, or stifled.  Synonym: choke.
4.
Suppress the development, creativity, or imagination of.  Synonym: choke.
5.
Be asphyxiated; die from lack of oxygen.  Synonyms: asphyxiate, stifle.
6.
Feel uncomfortable for lack of fresh air.
7.
Struggle for breath; have insufficient oxygen intake.  Synonyms: choke, gag, strangle.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Suffocate" Quotes from Famous Books



... prospect of a free pardon if they made a safe descent, but d'Arlandes got the royal consent to accompany Rozier, and the criminals lost their chance. Rozier and d'Arlandes made a voyage lasting for twenty-five minutes, and, on landing, the balloon collapsed with such rapidity as almost to suffocate Rozier, who, however, was dragged out to safety by d'Arlandes. This first aerostatic journey took place ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... seaman put in a hint that determined it. "First," says he, "the weather is very hot; and therefore I am for traveling north, that we may not have the sun upon our faces, and beating upon our breasts, which will heat and suffocate us; and I have been told," says he, "that it is not good to overheat our blood at a time when, for aught we know, the infection may be in the very air. In the next place," says he, "I am for going ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So, if you'll pardon me, I ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... will suffocate me!" Hsiang-lien observed, and, with this remark, he abandoned Hseh Pan to his own devices; and, pulling his horse, he put his foot to the stirrup, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... to insure the prolongation of our sufferings, so that we might die slowly, and afford them ample time to fully enjoy our agonies. The fires were lighted, and the smoke rolled up in volumes, and threatened to suffocate us and put a speedy end to our torments. In a few seconds however, as the wood got fairly blazing, the smoke lifted, and as we began to writhe in agony, a yell of delight went up from more than three thousand savage ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... was beating so fast that it seemed as if he would suffocate. At every step he feared to hear a shout behind him that would tell him that the ruse was discovered. But the fortune that had frowned upon him so many times of late this time was friendly. Behind him were the usual camp noises ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... wearer, "I feel suffocate on dthis boat—it ees so small, people eferywhere and you and I so leedle alone. Ah, ve vill soon ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... that they should not die of hunger feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a like nature, which are very common in Russia. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... purpose to live in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of sets of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a long table—four by seven feet is ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... much for Charlie, who shook all over with suppressed laughter; nor was Miss Cass proof against the contagion—she was obliged to almost suffocate herself with her handkerchief to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... the traveler. "Why, man, that is a very simple matter; open the window and freeze one lady. Then close it and suffocate the other." ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... one story, with attics in the mansard roofs, like those of a farmhouse in the country. I fancy Antony fled thither for a few moments, from the visitors who weary him; breathing the freshness of that dewy garden in the very midst of Paris. As for me, I suffocate this summer afternoon in this pretty Watteau chamber of ours, where Jean-Baptiste is at ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... beloved," she said, "and then we must part. But why are you so pale?" she asked of Hermann, whose heart was beating fast enough to suffocate him; for he was afraid now of the ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her promise bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck at Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in her sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she had done, nothing even that she had thought, had been concealed ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... bed of coals before the rocks became so heated that they would burn his feet. So he leaped to the first rock and from there began jumping from one to the other in quick succession. A withering wave of heat at once enveloped him, and for a time he feared he would suffocate before he could cross the cavern; but he held his breath, to keep the hot air from his lungs, and maintained his leaps ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... examine these objects. The fumes of the charcoal almost suffocate us. We run in every direction, overturning the idols and ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... her face haggard, her heart beating high in her throat as if to suffocate her. "What do you mean?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... head. Her lips would tremble slightly as she held out her hand to him; and as he sat and looked at her, she would become uncomfortably conscious of the beating of her heart; in fact at times it would almost suffocate her, and her cheeks would ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... calm now, and Willie was brave and hopeful. They all dressed, and Willie started the fire. The smoke refused to rise, but puffed out into the room, and Mrs. Barnes knew that if the chimney were closed they would probably suffocate, if they ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... their resting place. It was a place well calculated to bring up thoughts of death, but Wunpost faced the coming day calmly. At the first flush of dawn the sand was still hot from the sun of the evening before; the low air seemed to suffocate him with its below-sea-level pressure, and the salt marshes to give off stinking gases; it was a hell-hole, even then, and the day was yet to come, when the Valley ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... all things that inflow into such things as are in agreement with their own forms, just as the white light of the sun is turned into ugly colors or into black in those objects whose substances are interiorly of such a form as to suffocate and extinguish the light, and as stagnant ponds, dung-hills, and dead bodies turn the heat of the sun into stenches. From all this it can be seen that even evil uses are from the spiritual sun, but that good uses are changed in hell into evil uses. It is evident, therefore, that ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... after I had been a few hours on the road, the wind began to blow directly in my face, and soon enveloped me in a cloud of sand from which there seemed no escape, and which threatened actually to suffocate me. To avoid this I left the highway, but keeping what I supposed to be in the general direction of the road, I struck out into the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to repay me for this detour, except that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... patiently upon his hind feet and stepped about so slowly that the organ-man growled at him and struck the organ again. Then the dancer moved faster; but the ears did not fly and every motion was a jerk. Nevertheless, the princess's heart had now begun to suffocate her. She recalled Gabriel's story of washing off the brown color from the dingy fur in the brook, and her eyes swam with tears at the mere possibility that this might be the object of her search. She had just sense enough to keep still and leave everything to Gabriel. Here, too, approached ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... deceiving him anew. His sole obsession was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was this fear which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in which he was sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. But after a scene of this kind, he would half suffocate her with remorse. And this, perhaps, worked destruction most surely of all: the knowledge that, despite the ungovernable aversion she felt for him, she could still tolerate his endearments. Not once, as long as they had been together, had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... night passed without anything unusual happening. Once the wind veered around a little, threatening to suffocate them with smoke from the camp-fire, but by the time they prepared to vacate the shelter the wind veered back to where it had first come from and gave them ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... I admire Frank Henley, greatly, ardently admire him; yet I certainly do not love: that is, I certainly do not permit myself to feel any of those anxieties, alarms, hopes, fears, perturbations, and endearments, which we are told are inseparable from that passion. I extinguish, I suffocate them in their birth. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... with a heavy bang and went out into the street troubled. He was talking to himself: "Such a farce, by Jove! one would think she was a little sister, by the way I try to speak, and if she only knew how I struggle to suffocate the passion that rises within me, when she looks up so earnestly out of her big dreaming eyes; it is sheer folly and I'll go mad if it must continue—and yet—if uncle ever suspected my love he would separate us then and there. But it is dangerous dust I am flinging in his eyes by being ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... break the bones of the unfortunate person whom he thus entrapped. He managed to have a small chamber filled with some combustible in the side of the pit, which was to be set on fire, and, on the return of the platform to its place, suffocate his detenu with smoke. Whether he had performed any previous atrocities in this way, or whether the present instance was the commencement of his profession of homicide, is not told. By some means or other, having inveigled a stout countrywoman, coming with her eggs and apples to market, into ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... is termed overcharged; and when the radius is less, undercharged. A mine of small dimensions, formed by sinking a shaft in the ground, is termed a fougasse. The term camouflet is applied to a mine used to suffocate the enemy's miner, without producing an explosion. Small mines made in rock or masonry, merely for the purpose of excavation, without any considerable external explosion, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... those slain; the advantages of position were too great, and they were obliged at length to desist. But Genghis was not to be balked of his victims, and his devilish cunning suggested the expedient of lighting straw at the mouth of the cave to suffocate those inside, but the size of the place prevented his plan from taking effect; so he at last commanded a large fragment of rock to be rolled to the mouth of the cavern, adding another as a support, and having thus effectually barred their exit, he cruelly abandoned them to their fate. Of ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... overlaid, and forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under all this warm, wet jungle; he would give her air and sunshine, she that had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked her last resting place; he would lay bare the earth ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... saw by your looks that you wished to drink of that bottle, and I said within me, even though I suffocate, yet will I not leave one drop of the aguardiente of the Christian Cavalier to be wasted on that Jew, on whose ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... charmer might sit together under the shade of the sail for an hour at a stretch, he holding her hand in his and neither saying a single word, though at times the transports of poor Barnaby's emotions would go far to suffocate him with their rapture. As for her face at such moments, it appeared sometimes to assume a transparency as though of a light shining from behind ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... This invisible gas, this breath of air, through the magic of chemical combination, forms nearly half the substance of the solid rocks. Deprive it of its affinity for carbon, or substitute nitrogen or hydrogen in its place, and the air would quickly suffocate us. That changing of the dark venous blood in our lungs into the bright, red, arterial blood would instantly cease. Fancy the sensation of inhaling an odorless, non-poisonous atmosphere that would make ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... space. His universe must not be finished or inclosed. After a rational system had been formulated and declared to be the Whole, his first instinct was to get away from it. He was sure that there must be more outside than there was inside. "The 'through-and-through' universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible, impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity with no possibilities, its relations with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... the other members of the family, antitoxin is immediately administered. The disease runs a regular course and its most dangerous complication is the membrane which forms in the larynx and threatens to suffocate the child unless prompt intubation is performed—the slipping of a silver tube in the larynx to prevent suffocation and death. The early use of antitoxin greatly ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Cornhill, and then commenced to demolish the Royal Exchange. Having once made an entrance in this stately building it revelled in triumph; climbing up the walls, roaring along the courts and galleries, and sending through the broken windows volleys of smoke and showers of sparks, which threatened to suffocate and consume those who approached. Then the roof fell with a mighty crash, which seemed for a time to subdue the powerful conflagration; the walls cracked, parted, and fell; statues of kings and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... that afflict mankind. And the cause is not far to seek. Land is, in its very nature, the common property of the people. Like air and water, it is one of the natural elements which inhere in man as a common right, and without which life could in no wise be sustained. A man must have air, or he will suffocate; he must have water, or he will perish of thirst; he must have access to the soil, for upon it grow those things which nature intended for the sustentation of the physical man, and without which ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... if the palpitations of his heart would suffocate him. He swallowed two glasses of water ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... flown over my table."—It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody—and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself—whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with his memories?—To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great—nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true, no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by elaborate discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute. Lewis the Fourteenth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to follow, but a haze was forming over his eyes. His heart was pounding until he believed that he must suffocate. Then he reeled suddenly, lost his balance and fell ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... strong. I was pressing toward it, forcing my way, flattened against it, being crushed slowly between this thin, gray membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back. I knew that if the membrane did not give, if I did not break through at last, I would suffocate and die. In fact I was already dead, the idea came to me with a weight of horror, I twisted, lashing out in total panic. Then the thin gray wall split and gave way, ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew

... were young and took those trips to Cowichan. It is pretty hard to go!" I fully agreed with him then, but when later he got so bad and suffered so much, he prayed to go, and I again agreed with him, poor fellow. This latter time was when to speak made him cough and suffocate. "Old man, I cannot talk to you," and he would lie back in an exhausted state, and I would go, sorry that I was unable to do anything to relieve him, to slightly repay all his kindness ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... death, slay, shed blood; murder, assassinate, butcher, slaughter, victimize, immolate; massacre; take away life, deprive of life; make away with, put an end to; despatch, dispatch; burke, settle, do for. strangle, garrote, hang, throttle, choke, stifle, suffocate, stop the breath, smother, asphyxiate, drown. saber; cut down, cut to pieces, cut the throat; jugulate[obs3]; stab, run through the body, bayonet, eviscerate; put to the sword, put to the edge of the sword. shoot dead; blow one's brains ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Chancery suit. Similar causes contributed to the final wreck of Charles. The thought of a Restoration was his Chancery suit. A letter of November 1753, written by the Prince in French, is a mere hysterical outcry of impatience. 'I suffocate!' he exclaims, as if in a fever of unrest. He had indulged in hopes from France, from Spain, from Prussia, from a Highland rising, from a London conspiracy. Every hope had deceived him, every Prince had betrayed him, and now he proved false to ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... myself, Dick. I know that my little Myra is asleep. She'll suffocate, and won't wake up to ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... Thing thus crushing her? She strained to see, but the darkness was like black velvet; she could see nothing, only feel, breathlessly, chokingly. A horrible idea assailed her. Whatever it was, it was striving to suffocate her—yes, and it was going to succeed, unless she could muster the strength ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... changes a girl and alters, not only her outlook on life and her ways of thinking, but also her feelings. It has cooled and steadied me more than I could have believed. When Daddy quarrelled with Segontius and told me he would not let me marry Caius I used to feel as if I were going to suffocate, used to feel that way sometimes for hours at a time, used to suffer horribly, used to wake up in the dark and feel as if, if I could not get to Almo right then, at once, I should die, as if I should be choked to death by ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... and gases from the fire must not come out into the room to blind our eyes or suffocate us; the chimney is built to take care of the smoke and gases, and there must be a way for them to get into the chimney; the stove pipe is for this. But the game you have to play with your stove is to let the smoke and gases run up chimney, but to save all the heat you ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever they ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... sit down at that circle I think I'm going to scream. I just can't rake up enthusiasm over French knots. Something in me begins to suffocate and I can't get out ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... warning, and ere they realized their danger a dozen of them were struggling up to their arm-pits in the sea of fine ever-shifting sand that seemed kept in constant motion by some unknown natural cause. With each movement they sank deeper, until, fearing that the sandy quagmire would envelop and suffocate them, they cried aloud for assistance. Help was ready at hand, for the remainder of our followers ran forward, and stretching forth ropes of monkey-creeper were enabled to drag out their intrepid ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... evil, gloomy, mad thoughts went ever circling in his mind. "She is alive; she is here," he whispered to himself with constantly recurring amazement. He felt that he had lost Liza. Wrath seemed to suffocate him. The blow had too suddenly descended upon him. How could he have so readily believed the foolish gossip of a feuilleton, a mere scrap of paper? "But if I had not believed it," he thought, "what would have been the difference? I should not have known that Liza loves me. She would not have known ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... has honesty in its favour. The Valiant man of war, on its return from the Havannah, was so shockingly infested with them, that they destroyed a hundred weight of biscuit daily. The ship was smoked between decks in order to suffocate them, which had the desired effect. In proof of this, he says, that six hampers were for some time filled every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... the larvae wiggled up to the surface and inhaled it through curious little tubes developed for this purpose, oddly enough from their tail-ends. If some kind of film could be spread over the surface of the water, through which the larvae could not obtain air, they would suffocate. The well-known property of oil in "scumming over" water was recalled, two or three stagnant pools were treated with it, and to the delight of the experimenters, not a single larva was able to develop under the circumstances. Here was insecticide number one. The cheapest of oils, crude petroleum, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... trembling. "Right after supper last night. I thought I was going to suffocate. Got up and walked the streets all night. My ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... Another mistake; for if Roderick had not yet been destroyed by his own poisoned heart nor the snake by gnawing it, they had little to fear from arsenic or corrosive sublimate. Indeed, the venomous pest appeared to operate as an antidote against all other poisons. The physicians tried to suffocate the fiend with tobacco smoke. He breathed it as freely as if it were his native atmosphere. Again, they drugged their patient with opium and drenched him with intoxicating liquors, hoping that ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... endure to stay in the room! This house, his father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... to dig him out we shall suffocate him," cried Uncle Richard, speaking as if he had no doubt of the boy living still. "Look here, carpenter—David, there is only one way: three of us must be here with a rope fastened to this great root, and three ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him; For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must 'a be,— A damned death! Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate. But Exeter hath given the doom of death For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... us that assistance arrived, for human endurance could go no farther. We felt as though about to suffocate, and should have fallen upon the bodies of those whom we were attempting to save had not the inspector and one of his men carried us forcibly from the room to the open air, where we quickly received aid by the influence of a bottle containing a quantity of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... leap from a spree to a nightmare of violence and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one eye, and she had no arm free to replace it. She felt she must suffocate if these men did not put her down, and for a time they would not put her down. Then with an indescribable relief her feet were on the pavement, and she was being urged along by two policemen, who were gripping her wrists in an irresistible expert manner. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... was the unpleasant sensation of brawny savages kneeling on us and trussing us up with palm-fibre ropes. Also they thrust handfuls of dry grass into our mouths to prevent us from calling out, although as air came through the interstices of the grass, we did not suffocate. The thing was so well done that we never struck a blow in self-defence, and although we had our pistols at hand, much less could we fire a shot. Of course, we struggled as well as we were able, but it was quite useless; in three minutes we were as helpless as calves in a net and like ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... removing the native queen, a stranger must immediately be substituted in her place. Had this been done, I am fully persuaded, that M. de Reaumur would have seen the bees imprison the usurper, confine her at least twelve or fifteen hours among them, and frequently suffocate her: nor would he have witnessed any favourable reception before an interval of twenty-four hours after removal of the original queen. No variation has occurred in my experiments regarding this fact. Their number, and ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... guide into mine," he declared. After a moment's hesitation she gravely answered: "It might not hurt you to know something of my world after all. It's rather humanizing for an artist to free himself from a single environment. It is possible to suffocate on incense." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... making conversation had not been cultivated among the Californians, and Ysabel plied her large fan with slow grace, at a loss for further remark, and wondering if her heart would suffocate her. But Don Vicente ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Ready to suffocate with the emotions she repelled from her eyes, Mary gladly affected to be absorbed in the business of the stage, (not one object of which she now saw), and with breathless attention lost not one soft whisper which Lady Sara poured into the ear ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... were two or three pairs of gridirons, where they were burning others; and because they cried aloud and annoyed the captain or prevented him sleeping, he commanded that they should strangle them: the officer who was burning them was worse than a hangman and did not wish to suffocate them, but with his own hands he gagged them, so that they should not make themselves heard, and he stirred up the fire, until they roasted slowly, according to his pleasure. I know his name, and knew also his relations ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... convenient. It looks dingy and dark, doors are small and massive, windows are few and generally closed. This is partly because they are intended to keep out the tropical glare, and partly because the people seem averse to occupying an airy room. A westerner would suffocate in a room in which Hindus would delight to spend a night. It has always been a wonder to the writer that they thrive on so little ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... "Stop, lads, you'll suffocate the poor fellows if you pour all that water down their throats!" exclaimed McTavish, the Assistant Surgeon of the corvette, who had been lent to the Supplejack. "Just a wine-glassful at a time, with a few drops of brandy in it, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... smell which came from him, his clammy locks, and his gummy eyes, that the lad must be master Sleep. "Pray, sir," said I, squealing, "what have I done to you, that you bring that witch here to suffocate me?" "Hush," said he, "it is only my sister Nightmare; we are both going to visit our brother Death, and have need of a third, and lest you should resist, we have come upon you without warning, as he himself will sometime; therefore you must come, whether you ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... about the bed. He was sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical fear that had ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... his panting breath seemed to suffocate him, the strain had been so fearful; now he could do no more, he seemed to make no ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... forbidding white walls, and the grim grating of the massive door. He was too sensible to feel any sense of disgrace in being thus wrongfully imprisoned; but the horror of the situation remained, and it seemed as though he should suffocate behind those bars if not ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... afternoon. Unable to go to the Hill of the Muses, or up the river-road, she had taken a long, roundabout path around the outskirts of the village and so reached the hills back of the vineyard. The air of the valley seemed to suffocate her; she longed to climb to the silent places, where the four winds of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... the scene very impressive. Occasionally, one of us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb! magnificent! Beautiful! but-by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch tonight, we'll never live till morning! for if we don't burn up, we'll certainly suffocate." But he was persuaded to sit up until we felt pretty safe as far as the fire was concerned, and then we turned in, with many misgivings. When we got up in the morning, we found that the fire had burned small pieces of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 'it would fill in a moment and suffocate you. I see nothing for it, Peterkin, if you really can't keep your breath so long, but to let me knock you down, and carry you out while in a state ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... lights, her heart beating as though it would suffocate her. At last, her clothes soaked with the storm, her hair dripping, she returned to the house. Her aunt was in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... upper end of the hammock, into the bushes and so escape to the creek, where he hoped to find a hiding-place of some sort. He had got this far in his planning when he heard Judie cough, and stepping quickly into the room found it full of smoke. Seeing that to stay there was to suffocate, he beckoned his companions to follow, and stepping lightly they passed down the alley-way and sat down in one of the aisles, behind a great sycamore log which ran across the pile. Peeping over this log Tom saw the three Indians shoulder their guns and ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... himself was this: it is a great and wilful conspiracy on the part of the conservatives to suffocate good learning and make the old ignorance triumph. This idea recurs innumerable times in his letters after the middle of 1518. 'I know quite certainly', he writes on 21 March 1519 to one of his German friends, 'that the barbarians on all sides have ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... "and so we are. I've had a sea biscuit and a spoonful of salmon in the last two days. We're on whack. You see, when we discovered the fire, we battened down immediately to suffocate the fire. And then we found how little food there was in the pantry. But it was too late. We didn't dare break out the lazarette. Hungry? I'm just as hungry as ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... Suck sucxi. Sucking-pig porkido. Suckle mamnutri. Suction sucxado. Sudden subita. Sue procesi. Suet graso. Suffer (endure) suferi. Suffer (tolerate) toleri. Suffering sufero. Suffice suficxi. Sufficiency suficxeco. Sufficient suficxa. Suffix sufikso. Suffocate sufoki. Suffrage (vote) vocxdono. Sugar sukero. Sugar basin sukerujo. Suggest proponi, inspiri. Suicide memmortigo. Suicide, to commit sin memmortigi. Suit konveni. Suitable konvena, tauxga. Suite sekvantaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... control myself," he said, trembling at the idea that he would suffocate again and be unable to speak; and he resolved to begin his confession at the other end, first going over the minor sins, keeping the great ones for the end so as to finish with the avowal of his carnal misdeeds: "if I succumb ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... of his uncle, and to atone in part for his previous neglect, Bog devoted only a half eye to the Minford family, and kept the rest of his optics on the fire. Just after its discovery, the smoke had loomed up dense and black, as if it were trying to suffocate the flames beneath. Then it changed rapidly to a light blue, and was chased faster upward by two tongues of fire. These tongues leaped aloft with a sudden impulse, and shed a revelation of light over acres of houses, and brought out church steeples in vivid relief against the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... and yet indeed it is no joke! Where shall one get a smoke Without annoying Shes with our cheroots, And being badged as "brutes"? If a poor fellow may not snatch a whiff (Without the feminine sniff) Upon the "Bus-roof," where in thunder's name Shall he draw that same! The ladies, climb, sit, suffocate, and scoff, Declare they are "smoked off," Is there no room inside? If smoke means Hades, We, "to oblige the ladies," Have taken outside seats this many a year, Cold, but with weeds to cheer Our macintosh-enswathed umbrella'd bodies; Now we ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... ground. Bang! Once more, and a fellow who had nearly overpowered the breathless Figgs staggered back. Dick was writhing on the ground beneath the weight of a dead man and a fellow who was trying to suffocate him. Buttons was being throttled by three others who held him powerless, his razor being broken. A crack on Mr. Figgs's head laid him low. The Doctor stood off at a little ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a 'huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the uneven sic-vos-non-vobis pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... cautiously, seeking for a place to board. The heat from that floating mass of belching flame was terrific, and more than once, as a gust brought down a cloud of fumes over him, the boy thought he would suffocate. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... push the inquiry further. The simplest and most retired life would now please me, only I would not like to be confined to it, in case I grew weary, and now and then craved variety, for exhilaration. I want some scenes of natural beauty, and, imperfect as love is, I want human beings to love, as I suffocate without. For intellectual stimulus, books would mainly supply ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... you have thought of me, what would I have thought of myself had I left him to suffocate when I could just as well have brought him out? Do you think I could ever have looked you in the face again? You might not have ever known I could have saved him—but I should have hated myself every hour of my ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... actual indications, of course, for the pot is not there, but past indications, useless in a work of precision. And yet the disk to be cut out must have a fixed diameter: if it were too large, it would not go in; if too small, it would close badly, it would slip down on the honey and suffocate the egg. How shall it be given its correct dimensions without a pattern? The Bee does not hesitate for a moment. She cuts out her disk with the same celerity which she would display in detaching any shapeless lobe that might do for a stopper; and that ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... town towards the evening of the next day. She was displeased with something, but she concealed it, and only said, why was it all the window frames had been put in for the winter it was enough to suffocate one. I took out two frames. We were not hungry, but ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... worse, and at last it burst into a fit so long and violent as to seem as if it would never end. John held his breath and listened. "He'll suffocate," he thought; "he'll never live through it!" But the spasm passed, and there was a prolonged hush, a dead stillness, that was not broken by so much as the sound of a breath. Was he gone? By a sudden impulse, in the agony of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... said hoarsely, "you would never respect me any more if I took advantage of your tenderness now. As soon—as soon as I really may, I will teach you every shade of love and its meanings. I will kiss those lips and unloosen that hair; I will suffocate you with caresses and make you thrill as I shall thrill until we both forget everything in the intoxication of bliss," and he half-closed his eyes, and his face grew pale again with ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... Dacres even in his rage. But the very fact that it was unanswerable, and that he was helpless, only served to deepen and intensify his rage. Yet he said nothing; it was only in his face and manner that his rage was manifested. He appeared almost to suffocate under the rush of fierce, contending passions; big distended veins swelled out in his forehead, which was also drawn far down in a gloomy frown; his breath came thick and fast, and his hands were clenched tight together. Hawbury watched him in silence as before, feeling all the time the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... to envy you city chaps now. That makes the fourth engine that's come past. You get more for your money than we do. Look at that chief hurdling curbstones in his little red wagon. If Homeburg ever gets big enough to have a chief's wagon, I'll suffocate with pride. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... foretell that the sick man is to die, the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These men come, and lay so many clothes upon the sick man's mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man's kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of marrow remains in them; for they say that if any nourishment remained in the bones ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... prey is large, such as a big stag, the leopard's grip on the throat may not suffocate it completely; then the leopard uses another method. He keeps his grip on the throat of the prey, and pulls downward with his full weight. The prey tries to rear up on its hind legs to throw off the leopard—but then the leopard pulls downward with a sudden jerk. This breaks either the animal's ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... grew colder and colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in a vain attempt to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage, and my men covered their heads and everything with their blankets; but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to suffocate me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only was it more comfortable, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by Tibetans. My men moaned, groaned, and chattered their teeth convulsively during the night. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... nutrix, non poeta, non scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiae." The discoveries of physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative, agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... He's a burnin' shame, and a stinkin' lamp; for the grace o' God wasna hauden to the nib o' 'm lang eneuch to set him in a low (flame), but only lang eneuch to gar the ile o' 'm reek fit to scomfish (suffocate) a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... Tiberius is reported to have muttered, as he gazed at his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was to suffocate him with a mattress ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... Garrick's memory next, When time has somewhat mellowed it, and made The idol of our worship while he lived The god of our idolatry once more, Shall have its altar; and the world shall go In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine. The theatre, too small, shall suffocate Its squeezed contents, and more than it admits Shall sigh at their exclusion, and return Ungratified. For there some noble lord Shall stuff his shoulders with King Richard's bunch, Or wrap himself in Hamlet's inky cloak, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... What was she going to hear? Had Kenneth turned back half-way out to India for her sake? Had some trouble befallen him, in which he had come to seek her sympathy? What could it be? and her heart beating so as almost to suffocate ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... view very much, but every little while the wind would blow a cloud of sulphurous vapor from the crater, and nearly suffocate us. We walked to the edge of the crater and looked down, but we couldn't see much, because of the vapor. One of the guides went down into it a little way, and brought us up some pieces of sulphur. The cinders were so hot they burned ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... straightening himself up as if by a spring, "these scoundrels will suffocate us if some one doesn't squelch them!" His attitude, the glare of his eyes, and, above all, the prestige of the miraculous, cleared a space around him. One would have thought that the walls had been stretched or that the spectators had slid ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... out of its shell! It makes a little chip with its beak, and then sometimes it can't get any further, and you have gently to crack the hole bigger. Unless you're very careful you may kill it, but on the other hand, if it can't burst its shell when it's ready to hatch, it may suffocate, so it's a choice of evils. We put them in the drying pen first, and then in the 'foster mother.' They're like babies, and have to be fed every two hours. It's a tremendous business when you have hundreds of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... Susanna, and separately and with interest of all the rest of the family; but her surprise to see me now, by this most un expected journey, when she had concluded me inevitably shut up from her sight for the remainder of her life, joined to the natural warmth of her disposition, seemed almost to suffocate her. I was very sorry to leave her, but my time was unavoidably short and hurried. I inquired after Chesington, and heard very ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... if I had remained, neither would the two men have found the skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who shot at the queen. "It's a great pity," he replied, very sensibly, "they couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Mr. Birtwell's. At this thought the half-expelled devil that had been controlling him leaped back into his heart, filling it again with evil passions. But the wind was driving the fine, sand-like, sharp-cutting snow into his face with such force and volume as to half suffocate and bewilder him. Turning at this moment a corner of the street that brought him into the clear sweep of the storm, the wind struck him with a force that seemed given by a human hand, and threw him staggering against ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... balancing-pole, which enabled him to maintain his equilibrium in the midst of daily miseries, weaknesses, and mistakes. So that he attributed entirely to the idleness in which he had been living for some weeks past, the palpitation which at times made him feel as if he were going to suffocate. If he wished to recover his health he had only to take up ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... of the car—of the floor and ceiling and walls. But there was not a loose plank nor a crack—the car was new. And that suggested another idea—that he might suffocate before he starved. He was beginning to feel weak ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... Dad! Tommy will suffocate if you don't tell us now. She has been holding her breath ever since you ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... a single light showing. Every light inside of the boat is covered with a heavy black crape, and the port-holes and windows are so scrupulously and carefully chained down that the average open-air fiend from California or elsewhere feels that he will suffocate before morning comes, and even in the bitterest of winter weather I have known some fresh-air fiends to prefer the deck of the ship, with all of its bitter winds and cold, to the inside of a cabin with no windows open. I stood on the deck of an ocean liner "Somewhere ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger

... too numerous to mention, have abundantly shown us that a man can do without food altogether for forty days at a stretch, while he can't do without oxygen for a single minute. Cut off his supply of that life-supporting gas, choke him, or suffocate him, or place him in an atmosphere of pure carbonic acid, or hold his head in a bucket of water, and he dies at once. Yet, except in mines or submarine tunnels, nobody ever takes into account practically this most ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... mucaginous surface of the tonsils, the contagious atoms are liable to be arrested by the tonsil; which therefore becomes the nest of the future disease, like the inflamed circle round the inoculated puncture of the arm in supposititious small-pox. This swelling is liable to suffocate the patient in small-pox, and to become gangrenous in scarlet fever, and some other contagious fevers, which have been received in this manner. The existence of inflammation of the tonsil previous ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Christian Observer, which was lying near Miss Asenath, and fanned herself vigorously. Her efforts to cool herself were so vigorous that in a very few moments she was wet with perspiration and much warmer than she had been before she started to fan. She felt as if she were about to suffocate in this close room after her glorious little run in the breath ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... not suffer you to kill them." At length they came to a bee's nest, in which there was so much honey that it ran out of the trunk of the tree where it was. The two wanted to make a fire beneath the tree, and suffocate the bees in order to take away the honey, but Simpleton again stopped them and said, "Leave the creatures in peace, I will not allow you to burn them." At length the three brothers arrived at a castle where stone horses were standing in the stables, and no human being was to be seen, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... the bonds of moral life from doing them, and from thus manifesting the tendencies of his depraved will. Who cannot see that the Lord cannot flow in out of heaven into man and teach him and lead him until these evils have been removed? For they obstruct, repel, pervert, and suffocate the truths and goods of heaven, which present themselves from above, press down, and strive to flow in. For evils are infernal and goods are heavenly, and everything infernal burns ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg

... roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face, but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... frantic effort of the scientists to stop the gap would avail them nothing: it was an impossible task now. The construction of the great shell had been a different matter; there was some natural atmosphere remaining in those days. And, finally, they would suffocate, every last one of them. They'd die miserably, purple of face and with ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... I had only time to observe this, when they thrust me into the box, closed the lid, placed it in the wagon, and drove rapidly away. I could not doubt for a moment into whose hands I had fallen, and when they put me into the box, I wished I might suffocate, and thus end my misery at once. But they had taken good care to prevent this by boring holes in the box, which admitted air enough to keep up respiration. And this was the result of all my efforts for freedom! After all I had suffered in making ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... whether their joy is that of the angels of the highest heaven or of the lowest heaven, for everyone entering heaven comes into the highest joy of his own heart; joy higher still he does not endure; he would suffocate in it. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg



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