Choke vs Suffocate - What's the difference?
choke | suffocate |
To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe, for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way.
To prevent someone from breathing by strangling or filling the windpipe.
* Shakespeare
To obstruct by filling up or clogging any passage; to block up.
To hinder or check, as growth, expansion, progress, etc.; to stifle.
* Dryden
(intransitive, fluid mechanics, of a duct) to reach a condition of maximum flowrate, due to the flow at the narrowest point of the duct becoming sonic (Ma = 1).
To perform badly at a crucial stage of a competition because one is nervous, especially when one is winning.
To move one's fingers very close to the tip of a pencil, brush or other art tool.
To be checked, as if by choking; to stick.
* Sir Walter Scott
To affect with a sense of strangulation by passion or strong feeling.
* Jonathan Swift
To make a choke, as in a cartridge, or in the bore of the barrel of a shotgun.
A control on a carburetor to adjust the air/fuel mixture when the engine is cold.
(sports) In wrestling, karate (etc.), a type of hold that can result in strangulation.
A constriction at the muzzle end of a shotgun barrel which affects the spread of the shot.
A partial or complete blockage (of boulders, mud, etc.) in a cave passage.
The mass of immature florets in the centre of the bud of an artichoke.
(ergative) To suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.
(ergative) To die due to, or kill someone by means of, insufficient oxygen supply to the body.
* Shakespeare
(ergative, figuratively) To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
To destroy; to extinguish.
In transitive terms the difference between choke and suffocate
is that choke is to prevent someone from breathing by strangling or filling the windpipe while suffocate is to destroy; to extinguish.As verbs the difference between choke and suffocate
is that choke is to be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe, for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way while suffocate is to suffer, or cause someone to suffer, from severely reduced oxygen intake to the body.As a noun choke
is a control on a carburetor to adjust the air/fuel mixture when the engine is cold.As an adjective suffocate is
suffocated; choked.choke
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete) * (l) (obsolete) * (l) (dialectal)Verb
(chok)- With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.
- to choke a cave passage with boulders and mud
- (Addison)
- Oats and darnel choke the rising corn.
- The words choked in his throat.
- I was choked at this word.
Noun
(en noun)Derived terms
* choker * choke collar * unchokeSee also
* strangle English ergative verbssuffocate
English
Verb
(suffocat)- Open the hatch, he is suffocating in the airlock!
- He suffocated his wife by holding a pillow over her head.
- Let not hemp his windpipe suffocate .
- I'm suffocating under this huge workload.
- to suffocate fire