suffocating

• IPA^(key): /ˈsʌfəkeɪtɪŋ/

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suffocating

1. present participle and gerund of suffocate

suffocating (plural suffocatings)

1. Synonym of suffocation.
   • 1895 October 3, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “How to Tell a Story”, in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published 1898, →OCLC, page 6:

     Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.

suffocating (comparative more suffocating, superlative most suffocating)

1. That tends to suffocate the target(s); so overwhelming and lethal or life-threatening as to suffocate; suffocative.
   • 1427, Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde‎^[1], Penguin Books in Association with Methuen, page 165:

     It is difficult to conceive a state of society in which a sufficient number of disinterested and civilized and imaginative people would, even if given the chance, voluntarily undertake what would be to them the suffocating boredom of government.

   • 1877, Great Britain Parliament, Journal of the Society of Arts, Volume 25‎^[2], The Society., page 442:

     On the sudden outburst of a great fire, the passages are commonly filled with suffocating smoke, and often with flame, which render the hydrants in the internal passages inaccessible, and generally cut off communication with superior reservoirs, and of this there have been frequent large instances.

   • 1885, Clifford Kenyon Shipton, John Langdon Sibley, Sibley's Harvard Graduates‎^[3], Massachusetts Historical Society, page 40:

     "From the Thursday before to that Time he was dying of an hard Cough and a suffocating Asthma with a Fever; but he felt no great Pain; he had the sweet Composure and easy Departure, for which he had entreated so often and fervently the sovereign Disposer of all Things.

   • 1895, John Foxe, Foxe's Book of Martyrs‎^[4], Charles Foster Publishing Company, pages 222-223:

     But during this siege it is certain that Greek fire was used with dreadful effect upon the Turks, driving them back with its fierce flame and suffocating smoke as they attempted to cross the ditch and scale the walls, destroying their platforms and ladders, and consuming even the bodies of the dead.

   • 1998, Steven Lattimore, Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War: Thucydides‎^[5], Hackett Publishing Company Incorporated, →ISBN, pages 406-407:

     For since there were many in a deep and narrow space, the sun and the suffocating heat were still distressing them at first, and the contrasting cold autumnal nights that ensued weakened their condition by the change, and since they had to do everything in the same space because of close confines, and furthermore the corpses were piled together on one another, dead from wounds and because of the change and so forth, there were unbearable smells, and at the same time they were afflicted with hunger and thirst (for eight months they gave each a cup of water and two cups of food a day), and of all the other miseries men thrust into such a place were likely to suffer there was not one that they did not encounter. For up to seventy days, the whole group lived like this; then, except for the Athenians and whatever Sikeliots or Italiots had joined them, they sold them all. The total number captured, while difficult to give out accurately, was nevertheless not fewer than seven thousand.

• offuscating