stifle

verb/ˈstaɪfəl/

Frequency rank: #13,103 of 20,003 in the WORDED list (wordfreq data)

Meaning

to suppress or prevent something from happening; to make it hard to breathe.

Illustration for the English word “stifle”

Example sentence

The heavy smoke began to stifle her attempts to breathe normally.

Synonyms & related words

More words in ranks 13,101–13,200