gagging

Verb

gag (third-person singular simple present gags, present participle gagging, simple past and past participle gagged)

1. (intransitive) To experience the vomiting reflex.
   • He gagged when he saw the open wound.
2. (transitive) To cause to heave with nausea.
   • His empty stomach was suddenly full of butterflies, and for the first time since arriving here at scenic Durkin Grove Village, he felt an urge to gag himself. He would be able to think more clearly about this if he just stuck his fingers down his throat […]2008, Stephen King, A Very Tight Place
3. (transitive) To restrain someone's speech by blocking his or her mouth.
   • “[…] Captain Markam had been found lying half-insensible, gagged and bound, on the floor of the sitting-room, his hands and feet tightly pinioned, and a woollen comforter wound closely round his mouth and neck ; whilst Mrs. Markham's jewel-case, containing valuable jewellery and the secret plans of...1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Fate of the Artemis”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London...
4. (transitive) To pry or hold open by means of a gag.
   • […] some have their mouths gagged to such a wideness, for a long time, whereat such quantities of water are poured in, that their bellies swell to a prodigious degree […]1917, Francis Gregor (translator), De Laudibus Legum Angliae, Sir John Fortescue, written 1468–1471, first published 1543.
5. (figuratively, transitive) To restrain someone's speech without using physical means.
   • When the financial irregularities were discovered, the CEO gagged everyone in the accounting department.
6. (ambitransitive) To choke; to retch.

See all 18 meanings of gag