Word.ws English Dictionary

choke back

choke back verb: to hold back or suppress (an emotion, expression of emotion, or utterance), with difficulty.

Verb

choke back (third-person singular simple present chokes back, present participle choking back, simple past and past participle choked back)

  1. (transitive) To hold back or suppress (an emotion, expression of emotion, or utterance), with difficulty.
    • When she slapped me, I tried hard to choke back my tears.
    • He had a cutting retort on the tip of his tongue, but he choked it back.

Forms of choke back

third-person singular presentchokes back
present participlechoking back
past participlechoked back
pastchoked back

Questions about choke back

What does choke back mean?
Choke back means to hold back or suppress (an emotion, expression of emotion, or utterance), with difficulty.
What part of speech is choke back?
Choke back is a verb.
What is the past tense of choke back?
The past tense of choke back is choked back.

Words near choke back in the dictionary

  1. chokadars
  2. chokanye
  3. choke
  4. choke a darkie
  5. choke and puke
  6. choke back
  7. choke bean
  8. choke chain
  9. choke chains
  10. choke collar
  11. choke collars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: choke back (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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