How to use suffocate in a sentence
19 example sentences · verb, adjective
Suffocate means to suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body. Example: “Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!”
Examples of suffocate by meaning
verbTo suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
- Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!
- It is because of freedom, one netizen replied: Like air, you may not realize its importance, but when suffocating, you would know how precious it is.2020 November 2, Jiu Xiao, “Chinese Communist Party Officials Push Anti-U.S. Propaganda While Sending Families to Live in the U.S.”, in...
verbTo die due to, or kill someone by means of, insufficient oxygen supply to the body.
- He suffocated his wife by holding a pillow over her head.
verbTo overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
- I'm suffocating under this huge workload.
verbTo destroy; to extinguish.
- to suffocate fire
More sentences with suffocate
- For what it’s worth, the same holds true for fish bowls: overfill and you’ll suffocate the guppies.2005, Jennifer Rosen, Waiter, There’s A Horse In My Wine, →ISBN, page 253. From the entry for what it's worth
- When excavated soil is carelessly mounded around the base of a tree, the tree gradually suffocates.1998, David Reed, The Art and Craft of Stonescaping: Setting and Stacking Stone, →ISBN, page 71. From the entry tree well
- It was amazingly difficult to do; she was almost being suffocated.1997 September 13, w...@why.not, “Four Cowboys”, in alt.sex.stories (Usenet). From the entry manscent
- She was locked up for three days in the calidarium, the area of the steam baths, so she would suffocate.2021 March 3, Marinella Bandini, “Virtually visit the Basilica of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, built over the martyr's home”, in Aleteia…. From the entry calidarium
- Moreover, Xi's demand for absolute political obedience suffocates society.2020, Gordon G. Chang, The Great U.S.-China Tech War, New York: Encounter Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 24. From the entry critical thinking
- Suffocated by the stinksome whiff of too much broccoli!2020, James Patterson, Steven Butler, Dog Diaries. From the entry stinksome
- Flair and invention were very much at a premium, suffocated by the relentless pace and often fractious nature of proceedings.2014 November 14, Stephen Halliday, “Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero”, in The Scotsman. From the entry department
- They crane their cigaretted hands to their mouths in unison and share the same eerie glow of suffocated defeat.2008, Ibi Kaslik, The Angel Riots, Penguin Canada, →ISBN, page 229. From the entry cigaretted
- The syndicalist revolution requires capitalism to be expansive-to suffocate by its own energy, not to die of inanition.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford…. From the entry inanition
- In interviews he speaks in endless, ebullient sentences that surround their subjects like spider's webs and sometimes suffocate them.1976, James Monaco, “Rivette: The Process of Narrative”, in The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry logorrhea
- Eyes and ears were full of the gritty earth particles, and at times it seemed that they would suffocate.1928, Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand, page 136. From the entry black blizzard
- However, the Clyde Navigation Trust was having none of it, citing concerns that a railway bridge would suffocate trade on the busy river.2023 October 18, Nick Brodrick, “The grand gateway to Glasgow: 144 years of Glasgow Central”, in RAIL, number 994, page 34. From the entry have none of something
- Marshal shivered slightly in response to the icy brush of unaccustomed fear, a momentary chill that quickly suffocated in the bakeoven heat.1988, L. Christian Balling, Champion, New York, N.Y.: The Atlantic Monthly Press, →ISBN, page 7. From the entry bakeoven
- A dead man (he had, I think, been suffocated with a lambrequin, there being those who practice that art) lay at the corner.1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XVI, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 146. From the entry lambrequin
Meaning of suffocate
- verb To suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
- verb To die due to, or kill someone by means of, insufficient oxygen supply to the body.
- verb To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
Questions about suffocate in a sentence
- How do you use suffocate in a sentence?
- Suffocate is used as a verb and adjective. For example: “Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!”
- What is a short sentence with suffocate?
- “to suffocate fire”
- What does suffocate mean?
- Suffocate means to suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: suffocate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use suffocate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/suffocate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.