Word.ws English Dictionary

suffocates

suffocates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of suffocate.

Meaning of suffocate

Verb

suffocate (third-person singular simple present suffocates, present participle suffocating, simple past and past participle suffocated)

  1. (ergative) To suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
    • Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!
    Synonyms:
    asphyxiate, choke
  2. (ergative) To 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.
  3. (ergative, figuratively) To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
    • I'm suffocating under this huge workload.
  4. (transitive) To destroy; to extinguish.
    • to suffocate fire

See all 6 meanings of suffocate

Questions about suffocates

What is suffocates the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Suffocates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of suffocate.

Words near suffocates in the dictionary

  1. sufflues
  2. suffocate
  3. suffocated
  4. suffocater
  5. suffocaters
  6. suffocates
  7. suffocateth
  8. suffocating
  9. suffocatingly
  10. suffocatings
  11. suffocation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: suffocates (page history and authors); suffocate (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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Cite this entry: “suffocates.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/suffocates. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.