1. Held in check with difficulty
   "a stifled yawn";
   - smothered, strangled, suppressed

1. Suppress in order to conceal or hide
   "stifle a yawn";
   - smother, strangle, muffle, repress
    
2. Suppress or constrain so as to lessen in intensity
   "Stifle your curiosity";
   - dampen
    
3. Impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of
   "The foul air was slowly stifling the children";
   - suffocate, asphyxiate, choke
    
4. Be asphyxiated; die from lack of oxygen
   "The miners would have stifled without proper ventilation";
   - suffocate, asphyxiate
    
5. [informal] Be uncomfortably hot
   "The workers stifled in the unventilated room";
   - swelter

See also: inhibited

Type of: ache, block, bottle up, buy the farm [N. Amer, informal], cash in [informal], cash in one's chips [informal], close up, conk [informal], cop it [Brit, informal], croak [informal], decease [archaic], die, drop dead [informal], exit, expire, flatline [informal], give up the ghost [informal], go, hurt, impede, inhibit, jam, kick the bucket [informal], obstruct, obturate, occlude, pass, pass away, pass on, perish, pop off [informal], pop one's clogs [informal], snuff it [informal], suffer, suppress

Encyclopedia: Stifled