asphyxiate

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No one cared - not the guards who watched her asphyxiate, not the managers who ordered the guards not to intervene in her case, not the nameless bureaucrats who knew that my daughter needed help but did nothing but transfer her 17 times in 11 months.

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. transitive verb To cause asphyxia in; smother.
  2. intransitive verb To undergo asphyxia; suffocate.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

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Examples (50)

  • I wonder how long it will take for poor old Oates to thaw...but we'd all be long dead by then Look," Figgis says, "if you want to asphyxiate or fry or implode whatever else would happen outside, that's fine by me, Woolley, but don't expect us to follow. —  EBSCOhost
  • The police have bullet proof vests, tasers, pepper-spray, rubber bullets, dogs, riot gear, batons, handcuffs, smoke grenades, the ability to asphyxiate people to death and a few dozen other kinds of unethical forms of hand-to-hand killing techniques and weapons, some of which are even against the Geneva Convention, at their disposal so why must they carry guns to continue killing unarmed people? —  LA IMC
  • If man were not thoroughly intersubjective (as is the Trinity), he would starve or asphyxiate in the prison of his own being. —  One Cosmos
  • Hanging apparati - hooks and bloody nooses - used to asphyxiate countless Iraqi men, women, and children will be displayed, as well as torture devices like "a man-shaped metal cage where," according to reports, "Saddam's son Uday used to lock underperforming athletes for weeks at a time - and set them naked under the burning sun, the metal searing their flesh." —  RedState
  • People who drink alcohol can end up so passed out and braindead that they can choke on their own vomit and asphyxiate. —  بالاترین
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

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/æsˈfɪksɪeɪt/
by American Heritage

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