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asphyxiate

[as-fik-see-eyt] / æsˈfɪk siˌeɪt /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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This stops the stress hormone and lactic acid buildup that can hurt flavor and texture when fish are left to asphyxiate.

From Los Angeles Times Jul. 29, 2025

The allegations were released Thursday by Haiti’s antigovernment corruption unit, whose general director, Hans Joseph, pledged to go after those who “torpedo the public treasury and asphyxiate the country’s economic and social development efforts.”

From Seattle Times Aug. 26, 2022

While white phosphorus has toxic chemical properties, it is not generally used to poison or asphyxiate, the common aim of chemical weapons.

From The Guardian Dec. 18, 2019

They now dominate the culture so thoroughly that they threaten to asphyxiate it.

From New York Times Oct. 16, 2019

Poor engine hates it—coughing and spluttering the whole way—suppose I’m lucky I didn’t asphyxiate in the exhaust.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

Told that methylene chloride asphyxiates people at high enough levels, he said he didn’t want to talk about it.

From Slate Sep. 21, 2015

Their action takes place against cityscapes so steeped in shadowy, gas-lit mystique the reader practically asphyxiates.

From Slate Nov. 30, 2012

Stanley Greenfield, however, cynically argues that the revolt against the car may not take place until a thermal inversion, combined with a traffic jam out of Godard's Weekend, asphyxiates thousands on a freeway to nowhere.

From Time Magazine Archive

Be frank with Polk as to how much he asphyxiates me?

From The Tinder-Box by Maria Thompson Daviess

Ninety-nine out of every hundred people who visit picture galleries need to be delivered from that "museum atmosphere" which envelops works of art and asphyxiates beholders.

From Art by Clive Bell

It’s a fitting way to conclude an experience that’s like being slowly asphyxiated by puffy clouds of baby powder.

From The Wall Street Journal Mar. 12, 2026

When Lake Nyos erupted in 1986, it asphyxiated nearly 2,000 people and wiped out four villages in Cameroon.

From National Geographic Jan. 18, 2024

For decades, many experts thought they asphyxiated amid the massive clouds of ash belched from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

From Science Magazine Aug. 22, 2023

Last year, after 51 migrants died asphyxiated in a truck outside of El Paso, I argued in this website that that increased forced displacement in a context of restrictive migration regimes will cost innumerable lives.

From Slate Mar. 29, 2023

Even if it does manage to sprout, it can be choked by weeds, rooted up by a dog, mashed by a soccer ball, or asphyxiated by car exhaust.

From "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson

Gas stoves emit a variety of pollutants, including asphyxiating carbon monoxide, cancer-causing formaldehyde and benzene.

From Los Angeles Times May 22, 2024

A horror movie set almost entirely within the walls of a couple’s apartment, “Domestique,” directed by the Czech filmmaker Adam Sedlak, observes the asphyxiating intersection of two extreme body regulation routines.

From New York Times Mar. 10, 2023

Daily updates from energy traders drop into their email inboxes, showing the asphyxiating upward climb of prices for the natural gas and electricity that power their energy-devouring business.

From Seattle Times Sep. 8, 2022

As factories grew up across the city, the air outside became just as asphyxiating.

From Salon Jun. 4, 2022

It was Paul Marshall who broke more than three minutes of asphyxiating silence.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan




Vocabulary lists containing asphyxiate


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