choke out

present singular third person chokes out · participle present choking out · participle past choked out · past choked out

1. transitiveTo say (something) with difficulty, while or as if choking.

   He choked out the confession with the recklessness of final despair.

   1907, Booth Tarkington, chapter 10, in His Own People

   3 more examples

   Language failed. Pause—impotent struggle for further words—then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.

   1883, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in Life on the Mississippi

   […] giving way to tears, I choked out the dreadful trouble I was in.

   1950, Arthur Gask, chapter 4, in The Silent Dead, London: Herbert Jenkins

   I feel so terribly sick, she said to herself as if to some invisible, solicitous doctor, but managed to choke out to the librarian, “I’m sure there is an American poet Dickens.”

   1979, William Styron, chapter 4, in Sophie’s Choice, New York: Bantam, published 1980, page 124

2. transitiveTo prevent (something) from growing by overwhelming it or robbing it of nutrients.

   We had reached the end of the grass where the bush and trees of the mountain slope had choked it out […]

   1907, Percy FitzPatrick, “Buffalo Bushfire and Wild Dogs”, in Jock of the Bushveld, London: Longmans, Green, page 280

   2 more examples

   A grove of oaks, sturdy, spreading wide their branches clad in green-bronze leaves, had thrived to the elimination of spruces, except a few giants that could not be choked out.

   1931, Zane Grey, chapter 14, in Sunset Pass, New York: Pocket Books, page 224

   […] wasn’t it gradual enough? I mean, the wrinkles coming, the gray choking out the black, the skin slackening and sinews getting stringy?

   1953 September 18, Saul Bellow, chapter XXVI, in The Adventures of Augie March […], New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, pages 518–519

3. transitiveTo extinguish (fire) (by depriving it of oxygen or fuel).

   1 more example

   Of many people, his friends, he had asked that they would kindle again the smouldering embers of their experience; he had blown the low fires gently with his breath, and had leaned his face towards their glow, and had breathed in the words that rose like fumes from the revived embers, till he was sick with the strong drug of sufferings and ecstasies and sensations, and the dreams that ensued. But most folk had choked out the fires of their fiercer experience with rubble of sentimentality and stupid fear, and rarely could he feel the hot destruction of Life fighting out its way.

   1922, D. H. Lawrence, “A Modern Lover”, in A Modern Lover and Other Stories, New York: Ballantine, published 1969, pages 2–3

4. figurativelytransitiveTo destroy (something) by depriving it of a vital resource.

   […] he would earnestly and pathetically plead that we should not, as Priests, suffer the serving of tables to choke out that inner life of the spirit which it was our first duty to feed and nourish.

   1915, Henry Scott Holland, chapter 10, in A Bundle of Memories, London: Wells Gardner, Darton

   Synonyms: smother, starve, stifle

5. transitiveTo prevent (light) from passing through.

   The moment he pushes open the door the place speaks to me of prehistoric times […] when above the oozing bog that was the earth, swirling white gasses choked out the sunlight […]

   1969, Philip Roth, “The Jewish Blues”, in Portnoy’s Complaint, New York: Vintage

   1 more example

   Although this ivy had choked out what little light might have trickled into the room, it was not strong enough to prevent the birds from finding a way through and from visiting Lady Gertrude at any hour of night or day.

   1946, Mervyn Peake, “Tallow and Birdseed”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

   Synonyms: block, obstruct

6. transitiveTo cause (a person) to lose consciousness by applying a chokehold.

   We got out of the car, the guy resisted, and I choked him out. The bar arm was the tool of choice in those days. If anybody resisted, we just choked him out.

   2014, Gary Farmer, The Streets Are Blue, page 302