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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
asphyxia
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In cases of asphyxia the blood pressure rises to such an extent that the tiny blood vessels in the teeth burst.
▪ She had been beaten and strangled and died from multiple injuries and asphyxia.
▪ The cause of death is asphyxia, and one expects to find the usual signs of this.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Asphyxia

Asphyxia \As*phyx"i*a\, Asphyxy \As*phyx"y\, n. [NL. asphyxia, fr. Gr. ?; 'a priv. + ? to throb, beat.] (Med.) Apparent death, or suspended animation; the condition which results from interruption of respiration, as in suffocation or drowning, or the inhalation of poisonous or irrespirable gases.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
asphyxia

1706, "stoppage of pulse, absence of pulse," from Modern Latin, from Greek asphyxia "stopping of the pulse," from a- "not" (see a- (3)) + sphyzein "to throb." Obsolete in its original sense; the transferred sense of "suffocation" is from 1778, but it is a "curious infelicity of etymology" [OED] because victims of suffocation have a pulse for some time after breathing has stopped.

Wiktionary
asphyxia

n. 1 The loss of consciousness due to the interruption of breathing and consequent anoxia. Asphyxia can be result from choking, drowning, electric shock, injury. 2 The loss of consciousness due to the body's inability to deliver oxygen to its tissues, either by the breathing of air lacking oxygen or by the inability of the blood to carry oxygen. Such asphyxia can be result from the inhalation of non-toxic gases which displace oxygen from the inhaled air, by exposure to carbon monoxide from smoke inhalation such that hemoglobin is poisoned, or the development of methemoglobinemia. 3 (context medicine English) A condition in which an extreme decrease in the concentration of oxygen in the body leads to loss of consciousness or death. The term is now obsolete, having been replace in mid-twentieth century by the more specific terms anoxia, hypoxia, hypoxemia and hypercapnia.

WordNet
asphyxia

n. a condition in which insufficient or no oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged on a ventilatory basis; caused by choking or drowning or electric shock or poison gas

Wikipedia
Asphyxia

Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from abnormal breathing. An example of asphyxia is choking. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects primarily the tissues and organs. There are many circumstances that can induce asphyxia, all of which are characterized by an inability of an individual to acquire sufficient oxygen through breathing for an extended period of time. Asphyxia can cause coma or death.

In 2013 about 1.6 million cases of unintentional suffocation occurred. The word asphyxia is from Ancient Greek "without" and , "squeeze" (throb of heart).

Usage examples of "asphyxia".

But it was asphyxia, it was immediate death, if the result of this last attempt should prove fruitless.

In fact, two dangers were to be feared when Dick Sand should be going over the cataract: asphyxia by the water, and asphyxia by the air.

In these conditions, it seems that a man would have some chance of escaping the double asphyxia, even in descending the cataracts of a Niagara.

There was some livor mortis, or lividity, that had settled into her thighs and buttocks, and the lividity was a deep purple color, which would be consistent with asphyxia, which in turn was consistent with the rope around her neck.

He may have twisted the rope to get her undivided attention, he may even have sexually stimulated her while he was causing sexual asphyxia, a trick he may have learned from her .

The glottis may be inflamed, and if there is danger of asphyxia, tracheotomy may have to be performed.

The Ephemerides records a birth as having occurred during asphyxia, and also one during an epileptic attack.

In his later statistics Morisani gives 55 cases with 2 maternal deaths and 1 infantile death, while Zweifel reports 14 cases from the Leipzig clinic with no maternal death and 2 fetal deaths, 1 from asphyxia and 1 from pneumonia, two days after birth.

Schenck details the history of a case in which the pulse ceased for three days and asphyxia was almost total, but the patient eventually recovered.

Hippocrates speaks of asphyxia from a serpent which had crawled into the mouth.

Taylor relates the history of a case of asphyxia in which he produced a successful issue by extracting one gallon of blood from his patient during twelve hours.

This man died in 1802 at the age of fifty, asphyxia being the precursor of death.

It was while going afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found both my parents on their way to the Hill.

After release from prison, his crimes escalated to the murder of three young women by asphyxia.

In the cases of strangulation, or asphyxia, one always sees petechial hemorrhages on the conjunctiva.