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say it: STAHY-fuhl
stifle is a verb and noun meaning "suppress in order to conceal or hide". It carries 5 recorded senses.
suppress or constrain so as to lessen in intensity
“Stifle your curiosity”
impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of
“The foul air was slowly suffocating the children”
be asphyxiated; die from lack of oxygen
“The child suffocated under the pillow”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for stifle come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.