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say it: SUHF-uh-kayt
suffocate is a verb meaning "deprive of oxygen and prevent from breathing". It is pronounced /ˈsʌfəˌkeɪt/ — SUHF-uh-kayt. It carries 7 recorded senses.
deprive of oxygen and prevent from breathing
“Othello smothered Desdemona with a pillow”
“The child suffocated herself with a plastic bag that the parents had left on the floor”
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”
feel uncomfortable for lack of fresh air
“The room was hot and stuffy and we were suffocating”
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 suffocate 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.