asphyxiate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
asphyxiates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
asphyxiated,
past participle, past
-
asphyxiating
present participle
verb (used without object)
-
asphyxiates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
asphyxiated,
past participle, past
-
asphyxiating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
asphyxiatesimple
-
asphyxiatessimple
-
have asphyxiatedperfect
-
has asphyxiatedperfect
-
am asphyxiatingprogressive
-
are asphyxiatingprogressive
-
is asphyxiatingprogressive
-
have been asphyxiatingperfect progressive
-
has been asphyxiatingperfect progressive
Past
-
asphyxiatedsimple
-
had asphyxiatedperfect
-
was asphyxiatingprogressive
-
were asphyxiatingprogressive
-
had been asphyxiatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of asphyxiate
First recorded in 1830–40; asphyxi(a) + -ate 1
Explanation
To asphyxiate is to keep someone from breathing — to suffocate or smother them. Choking on a piece of food can asphyxiate a person. Your body needs to breathe oxygen in order to function, and when it's deprived of oxygen that's called asphyxia or asphyxiation. If a person stops being able to breathe, you can also say they asphyxiate. The origin of this verb is asphyxia, "stopping of the pulse," in Greek, which originally had the same meaning in English, before it came to mean "suffocation."
Vocabulary lists containing asphyxiate
National Spelling Bee '14: Prelims Round 3
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This Week in Words: November 24 - 30, 2018
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Selected Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The allegations were released Thursday by Haiti’s antigovernment corruption unit, whose general director, Hans Joseph, pledged to go after those who “torpedo the public treasury and asphyxiate the country’s economic and social development efforts.”
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 26, 2022
Avalanche victims can asphyxiate from breathing in carbon monoxide from their own exhalation while buried beneath the snow.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2021
While white phosphorus has toxic chemical properties, it is not generally used to poison or asphyxiate, the common aim of chemical weapons.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 18, 2019
They now dominate the culture so thoroughly that they threaten to asphyxiate it.
From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2019
Poor engine hates it—coughing and spluttering the whole way—suppose I’m lucky I didn’t asphyxiate in the exhaust.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
Told that methylene chloride asphyxiates people at high enough levels, he said he didn’t want to talk about it.
From Slate ● Sep. 21, 2015
Their action takes place against cityscapes so steeped in shadowy, gas-lit mystique the reader practically asphyxiates.
From Slate ● Nov. 30, 2012
Stanley Greenfield, however, cynically argues that the revolt against the car may not take place until a thermal inversion, combined with a traffic jam out of Godard's Weekend, asphyxiates thousands on a freeway to nowhere.
From Time Magazine Archive
Ninety-nine out of every hundred people who visit picture galleries need to be delivered from that "museum atmosphere" which envelops works of art and asphyxiates beholders.
From Art by Clive Bell
Be frank with Polk as to how much he asphyxiates me?
From The Tinder-Box by Maria Thompson Daviess
It’s a fitting way to conclude an experience that’s like being slowly asphyxiated by puffy clouds of baby powder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026
Victor had been dealing with breathing issues, and she wonders whether the heavy smoke might have asphyxiated him.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2025
When Lake Nyos erupted in 1986, it asphyxiated nearly 2,000 people and wiped out four villages in Cameroon.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 18, 2024
For decades, many experts thought they asphyxiated amid the massive clouds of ash belched from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 22, 2023
Gloria had a grip about the robot’s neck that would have asphyxiated any creature but one of metal, and was prattling nonsense in half-hysterical frenzy.
From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
Gas stoves emit a variety of pollutants, including asphyxiating carbon monoxide, cancer-causing formaldehyde and benzene.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2024
Daily updates from energy traders drop into their email inboxes, showing the asphyxiating upward climb of prices for the natural gas and electricity that power their energy-devouring business.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 8, 2022
As factories grew up across the city, the air outside became just as asphyxiating.
From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2022
But its popularity as a relatively low-cost, versatile destination has seen the number of visitors rise to the asphyxiating level of about 19 million a year.
From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2019
It was Paul Marshall who broke more than three minutes of asphyxiating silence.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
