suffocative

comparative more suffocative · superlative most suffocative

1. Tending or able to choke or stifle.

   suffocative catarrhs

   1712, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies

   4 more examples

   Both of these were true; but the snowy heights of the numerous surrounding hills, and the loner chain of mountains which reached quite across and almost buried the adjoining kingdom of Thrace, preserved a more steady and severe cold in winter, than on the sea-coast; and a more uniform and suffocative heat, in summer.

   1797, The Medical Repository, T. & J. Swords, page 5

   March 24, 1803, the day of his entrance into the Clinical Hospital, he was in a state of extreme anxiety; respiration was suffocative ; he felt in the region of the heart sharp pains which compelled him to shriek, particularly at night.

   1812, C. E. Horeau, Corvisart des Marets, Jacob Gates, Jean Nicolas, Watson & Bangs, An Essay on the Organic Diseases and Lesions of the Heart and Great Vessels, Anthony Finley, Bradford and Read, Watson & Bangs, page 202

   Azote, by others called phlogisticated, mephitic, corrupted, or suffocative air, is absolutely unrespirable, and not miscible with water. It arises from the change which atmospherical air undergoes in every process of combustion, putrefaction and respiration, whether produced by nature or art.

   1822, James Ewell, The Medical Companion, B. Edes, page 5

   The shore is skirted by two enormous cliffs of sand-stone that rise between two and three hundred feet in perpendicular height. The old town is built in a deep ravine opening towards the northeast, that lies between them, and the new town immediately under'the cliffs, fronting south and west ; and hence, while the air is rushing in a perpetual current through the former, it becomes stagnant, heated, and suffocative in the latter.

   1827, John Mason Good, The Study of Medicine (Volume 3), J. & J. Harper for Collins and Hannay, page 203

   Synonyms: suffocating