stifled

American  

[stahy-fuhld] / ˈstaɪ fəld /

adjective

1. quelled, crushed, or ended by force.

   The activist has been in and out of detention as she continues to call attention to her country's stifled uprising.

2. suppressed, repressed, or inhibited.

   My foot slipped, and with a stifled shriek I found myself grasping desperately for a handhold.

   One version of me grew up as expected, appearing as a confident adult to the outside world; the other remained a stifled, insecure child.

3. deprived of air or of the ability to breathe.

   The light is mixed with the dust floating in the stifled hut, where the air inside never moves.

   When I see that picture of the stifled refugees hidden in the van, I don’t understand the heartlessness that permits such a thing.

---

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of stifle.

Other Word Forms

• unstifled adjective

Etymology

Origin of stifled

stifle ¹ ( def. ) + -ed ²

Explanation

Stifled is an adjective for anything that's been squashed or smothered. You might have a stifled ambition to be an astronaut that you never admitted to others. Something stifled is stunted, or prevented from growing. If your mother never let you read books or climb trees, your childhood curiosity might have been stifled. Perhaps your career was stifled because you were constantly daydreaming about being an astronaut, and so failed to do your job well.

Example Sentences

Starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez stifled the USA bats led by New York Yankees home run king Aaron Judge.

From Barron's • Mar. 18, 2026

She feels stifled when she can’t be trusted to do things on her own.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 10, 2026

Bitcoin’s recovery run has been stifled somewhat at the start of the week by a bounce in gold that has taken the precious metal back over $5,000 an ounce.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 9, 2026

The party’s longer leash for some creative industries is helping to boost cultural output that had been stifled by regulatory scrutiny in recent years.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 31, 2026

“The fact that I was unable to interpret it did not bother me. It was certainly better to imagine myself becoming famous than maturing into a stifled academic who had never risked a thought.”

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Related Words

• delicate
• dim
• distant
• dull
• far-off
• gentle
• hazy
• inaudible
• mild
• muffled
• muted
• remote
• slight
• soft
• soothing
• vague
• weak