Crossword clues for stifling
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stifle \Sti"fle\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stifled; p. pr. & vb. n. Stifling.] [Freq. of OE. stif stiff; cf. Icel. st[=i]fla to dam up.]
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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.
--Dryden.I took my leave, being half stifled with the closeness of the room.
--Swift. -
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.
--Sir I. Newton. -
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.
--Waterland.
Wiktionary
That stifles. n. The act by which something is stifled. v
(present participle of stifle English)
WordNet
adj. characterized by oppressive heat and humidity; "the summer was sultry and oppressive"; "the stifling atmosphere"; "the sulfurous atmosphere preceding a thunderstorm" [syn: sultry, sulfurous, sulphurous]
n. forceful prevention; putting down by power or authority; "the suppression of heresy"; "the quelling of the rebellion"; "the stifling of all dissent" [syn: suppression, crushing, quelling]
Usage examples of "stifling".
Wiping eyes and stifling laughs, the three men turned to appraise him.
Being inside an Architect temple, he thought, was as stifling as being inside a computer.
Lovers in like manner live on their capital from failure of income: they, too, for the sake of stifling apprehension and piping to the present hour, are lavish of their stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of intoxication in view of coming famine: they force memory into play, love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past and ravage the larder, and would gladly, even resolutely, continue in illusion if it were possible for the broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold out for a length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good sooth stands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive or of the creature it is for nourishing.
She was an Afghan refugee who had traded her stifling burqa for a Kevlar vest and combat gear.
Stifling a humph, he drew her a fraction closer--and set his mind to enjoying the rest of the waltz.
Stifling the urge, he led Lady Litton to her seat, made the brief introductions and indicated for Brighton to follow him before storming off.
Berating herself, she scrambled back into the stifling dusty confines of the manuka scrub.
Monsieur de la Mery found the atmosphere in this house a trifle stifling.
Australia was not what it should be, but even the wild mana and the chaos were preferable to the deadness of the metroplex and the stifling, oppressive gloom cast by the corporate skyscrapers.
And in many ways Jason Lawton, like Perihelion itself, remains under the stifling influence of his father.
This death-like pause, this awful blank, this tense, anxious lapse, this pulseless, stifling silence is brief.
But even at those hours of the day the stifling heat was almost unbearable and she was thankful to return to the dim, shuttered rooms where the swinging punkahs and the tinkling splash of the fountains at least gave an illusion of coolness.
His Supremity was complaining to me it was that stifling in the library it pretty near made him sick.
To the Taris they looked stifling, especially in the late summer heat.
Berdichev looked down, stifling the laugh that came unbidden to his lips.