choke

1. (intransitive) To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe (for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way, or fumes or particles in the air that cause the throat to constrict).Examples: "Ever since he choked on a bone, he has refused to eat fish."; "Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress."; "See your brain - Choke, choke, choke Watch it drain - Choke, choke, choke See your greed - Choke, choke, choke Watch it breed - Choke, choke, choke Fake, you're falling down Choke, your neck is broken"intransitive

2. (transitive) To prevent (someone) from breathing or talking by strangling or filling the windpipe.Examples: "The collar of this shirt is too tight; it’s choking me."; "With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:"; "Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked."Synonyms: asphyxiate, strangle, suffocate, throttletransitive

3. (transitive) To obstruct (a passage, etc.) by filling it up or clogging it.Examples: "to choke a cave passage with boulders and mud"; "This was a Passage, so rugged, so uneven, and choaked with so many Thorns and Briars, that it was a melancholy Spectacle to behold the Pains and Difficulties which both Sexes suffered who walked through it."; "But at Christmas the pavements were crowded with overdressed shoppers from the country, the streets choked with slow but strident traffic."Synonyms: block up, bung up, clog, congest, jam, obstruct, stop uptransitive

4. (transitive) To hinder or check, as growth, expansion, progress, etc.; to kill (a plant by robbing it of nutrients); to extinguish (fire by robbing it of oxygen).Examples: "Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted; Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden And choke the herbs for want of husbandry."; "And some [seeds] fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:"; "1697, John Dryden (translator), “The Fifth Pastoral,” lines 55-56, in The Works of Virgil, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 22, No fruitful Crop the sickly Fields return; But Oats and Darnel choak the rising Corn."Synonyms: choke out, stifletransitive

5. (intransitive, colloquial) To perform badly at a crucial stage of a competition, especially when one appears to be clearly winning.Examples: "He has a lot of talent, but he tends to choke under pressure."; "“I can’t say that I choked on those match points,” Williams said. “She literally played her best tennis ever on those shots.”"colloquialintransitive

6. (transitive) To move one's fingers very close to the tip of a pencil, brush or other art tool.Examples: "A brief tryout will demonstrate that the modified grip does indeed make it difficult to “choke” the pencil or apply excessive pressure to the paper."transitive