1. Breathe with great difficulty, as when experiencing a strong emotion
   "She choked with emotion when she spoke about her deceased husband"
    
2. Struggle for breath; have insufficient oxygen intake
   "he swallowed a fishbone and choked";
   - gag, strangle, suffocate
    
3. Impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of
   "The foul air was slowly choking the children";
   - suffocate, stifle, asphyxiate
    
4. Become or cause to become obstructed
   "The leaves choke off our drains in the Fall";
   - clog, choke off, clog up, back up, congest, foul
    
5. Check or slow down the action or effect of
   "She choked her anger"
    
6. Fail to perform adequately due to tension or agitation
   "The team should have won hands down but choked, disappointing the coach and the audience"
    
7. Be too tight; rub or press
   "This neckband is choking the cat";
   - gag, fret
    
8. Wring the neck of
   "The man choked his opponent";
   - scrag [N. Amer, informal]
    
9. Become stultified, suppressed, or stifled
   "He is choking — living at home with his aged parents in the small village";
   - suffocate
    
10. Suppress the development, creativity, or imagination of
    "His job choked him";
    - suffocate
     
11. Reduce the air supply
    "choke a carburettor";
    - throttle
     
12. Cause to retch or choke
    "The thick smoke choked the firefighters";
    - gag
     
13. Compress or constrict the throat or windpipe cutting off air for breathing, potentially causing death
    "The attacker tried to choke his victim";
    - strangle, strangulate, throttle

1. A valve that controls the flow of air into the carburettor of a petrol engine
   "He adjusted the choke to help start the cold engine"
    
2. A coil of low resistance and high inductance used in electrical circuits to pass direct current and attenuate alternating current
   "The engineer added a choke coil to the circuit to reduce electromagnetic interference";
   - choke coil, choking coil
    
3. A narrowing at the end of a shotgun barrel used to restrict the spread of the shot
   "He adjusted the choke to tighten the shot pattern"

Derived forms: choked, chokes, choking

Type of: ache, become, block, bottle up, breathe, close up, coil, compact, compress, constrict, contract, dampen, enrich, fail, hurt, impede, inhibit, jam, kill, neglect, obstruct, obturate, occlude, press, respire, sicken, squeeze, stifle, suffer, suppress, suspire [literary], take a breath, turn, valve

Part of: circuit, electric circuit, electrical circuit, fuel system

Encyclopedia: Choke