asphyxiate

The allegations were released Thursday by Haiti’s antigovernment corruption unit, whose general director, Hans Joseph, pledged to go after those who “torpedo the public treasury and asphyxiate the country’s economic and social development efforts.”

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 26, 2022

Avalanche victims can asphyxiate from breathing in carbon monoxide from their own exhalation while buried beneath the snow.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2021

While white phosphorus has toxic chemical properties, it is not generally used to poison or asphyxiate, the common aim of chemical weapons.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 18, 2019

They now dominate the culture so thoroughly that they threaten to asphyxiate it.

From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2019

Poor engine hates it—coughing and spluttering the whole way—suppose I’m lucky I didn’t asphyxiate in the exhaust.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

Told that methylene chloride asphyxiates people at high enough levels, he said he didn’t want to talk about it.

From Slate ● Sep. 21, 2015

Their action takes place against cityscapes so steeped in shadowy, gas-lit mystique the reader practically asphyxiates.

From Slate ● Nov. 30, 2012

Stanley Greenfield, however, cynically argues that the revolt against the car may not take place until a thermal inversion, combined with a traffic jam out of Godard's Weekend, asphyxiates thousands on a freeway to nowhere.

From Time Magazine Archive

Be frank with Polk as to how much he asphyxiates me?

From The Tinder-Box by Daviess, Maria Thompson

Ninety-nine out of every hundred people who visit picture galleries need to be delivered from that "museum atmosphere" which envelops works of art and asphyxiates beholders.

From Art by Bell, Clive

It’s a fitting way to conclude an experience that’s like being slowly asphyxiated by puffy clouds of baby powder.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026

Victor had been dealing with breathing issues, and she wonders whether the heavy smoke might have asphyxiated him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2025

When Lake Nyos erupted in 1986, it asphyxiated nearly 2,000 people and wiped out four villages in Cameroon.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 18, 2024

For decades, many experts thought they asphyxiated amid the massive clouds of ash belched from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

From Science Magazine ● Aug. 22, 2023

Gloria had a grip about the robot’s neck that would have asphyxiated any creature but one of metal, and was prattling nonsense in half-hysterical frenzy.

From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov

Environmentalists also say that the transportation and injection of CO2 — an asphyxiating gas that displaces oxygen — could lead to dangerous leaks.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 14, 2024

Daily updates from energy traders drop into their email inboxes, showing the asphyxiating upward climb of prices for the natural gas and electricity that power their energy-devouring business.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 8, 2022

As factories grew up across the city, the air outside became just as asphyxiating.

From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2022

But its popularity as a relatively low-cost, versatile destination has seen the number of visitors rise to the asphyxiating level of about 19 million a year.

From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2019

If just one of them moved, I thought, the domino effect could engulf the three of us in an asphyxiating mass of literature.

From "Looking for Alaska" by John Green