SUFFOCATING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does suffocating mean? 

• SUFFOCATING (adjective)
  The adjective SUFFOCATING has 1 sense:

1. causing difficulty in breathing especially through lack of fresh air and presence of heat

  Familiarity information: SUFFOCATING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUFFOCATING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing difficulty in breathing especially through lack of fresh air and presence of heat

Synonyms:

smothering; suffocating; suffocative

Context example:

the room was suffocating--hot and airless

Similar:

breathless; dyspneal; dyspneic; dyspnoeal; dyspnoeic (not breathing or able to breathe except with difficulty)

 Context examples 

How long she had been there in that suffocating atmosphere I could not guess.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A colorless, flammable, carcinogenic liquid with an extremely suffocating odor.

(Bis(chloromethyl) Ether, NCI Thesaurus)

He could scarcely breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and suffocating him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

A widespread, naturally occurring, colorless and flammable liquid with a suffocating smell.

(Acetaldehyde, NCI Thesaurus)

He steeled himself to keep above the suffocating languor that lapped like a rising tide through all the wells of his being.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!'

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I was beneath the water, suffocating and drowning.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It was life, the pangs of life, this awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)