choking

Noun

choking (countable and uncountable, plural chokings)

1. The process in which a person's airway becomes blocked, resulting in asphyxia in cases that are not treated promptly.
   • In the last 6 years, there has been a great effort to educate the public concerning the prevention of choking due to accidental aspiration of foods or small objects by children.1988, American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy Reference Guide, page 150
   • The study found that 29 percent of nonfood-related chokings were caused by latex balloons.1998, Christina Elston, Safe and Secure: The Loving Parent's Guide to Child Safety, page 248
2. The act of coughing when a person finds it difficult to breathe.
   • Putting the latter on her head and the former on the table, the old woman, after telling Oliver that she had come to sit up with him, drew her chair close to the fire and went off into a series of short naps, chequered at frequent intervals with sundry tumblings forward, and divers moans and...1838, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, page 98
   • The chokings, which now always succeed every epileptic sleep, are violent beyond description, and last a long time.1848, William Harcourt Ranking, Charles Bland Radcliffe, William Domett Stone, The Half-yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences, page 40
3. The act of trying to kill a person by strangulation.
   • She tells of many chokings and blows inflicted by the defendant, and says her health was thereby affected and, presumably, her life endangered.1966, Reports of Cases in Law and Equity Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa, page 933
   • This particular man was a small, wiry , athletic Negro who had confessed to many chokings and rapings of young women.1972, Burton M. Atkins, Henry R. Glick, Prisons, Protest, and Politics, page 52
4. The result of something being choked.
   • This feature has been found effective in reducing injector trouble, resulting either from the clogging of sieves or the choking of the annular orifices of the injectors by fine particles of coal.1957 October, “Modification of "West Country" Class Pacific”, in Railway Magazine, page 731