Choke

Quick meaning: Choke is a verb meaning (transitive) To prevent (someone) from breathing or talking by strangling or filling the windpipe.

Meaning

(transitive) To prevent (someone) from breathing or talking by strangling or filling the windpipe.

More Meanings

1. (transitive) To obstruct (a passage, etc.) by filling it up or clogging it.
2. (intransitive, colloquial) To perform badly at a crucial stage of a competition, especially when one appears to be clearly winning.
3. (transitive) To move one's fingers very close to the tip of a pencil, brush or other art tool.
4. (golf, baseball, transitive) To hold the club or bat lower on the shaft in order to shorten one's swing.
5. (intransitive) To be checked or stopped, as if by choking
6. (intransitive) To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe (for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way, or fumes or particles in the air that cause the throat to constrict).
7. (transitive) To hinder or check, as growth, expansion, progress, etc.; to kill (a plant by robbing it of nutrients); to extinguish (fire by robbing it of oxygen).

Example Sentences

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:

The collar of this shirt is too tight; it’s choking me.

Ever since he choked on a bone, he has refused to eat fish.

The man became insane; he stood over me, choking me with one fist and beating me in the face with the other […]

Word Forms

• chokes
• choking
• choked
• choak
• choake
• chock

Synonyms for choke

Depending on context, synonyms include asphyxiate, strangle, suffocate, throttle, clog, congest.

Antonyms for choke

Common opposites include unclog.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include suffocate, gag, scrag, croak, foul, drop dead.

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