choke out

choke out (third-person singular simple present chokes out, present participle choking out, simple past and past participle choked out)

1. (transitive) To say (something) with difficulty, while or as if choking.
   • 1883, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in Life on the Mississippi‎:

     Language failed. Pause—impotent struggle for further words—then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.

   • 1907, Booth Tarkington, chapter 10, in His Own People‎:

     He choked out the confession with the recklessness of final despair.

   • 1950, Arthur Gask, chapter 4, in The Silent Dead‎, London: Herbert Jenkins:

     […] giving way to tears, I choked out the dreadful trouble I was in.

   • 1979, William Styron, chapter 4, in Sophie’s Choice‎, New York: Bantam, published 1980, page 124:

     I feel so terribly sick, she said to herself as if to some invisible, solicitous doctor, but managed to choke out to the librarian, “I’m sure there is an American poet Dickens.”

2. (transitive) To prevent (something) from growing by overwhelming it or robbing it of nutrients.
   • 1907, Percy FitzPatrick, “Buffalo Bushfire and Wild Dogs”, in Jock of the Bushveld‎, London: Longmans, Green, page 280:

     We had reached the end of the grass where the bush and trees of the mountain slope had choked it out […]

   • 1931, Zane Grey, chapter 14, in Sunset Pass‎, New York: Pocket Books, page 224:

     A grove of oaks, sturdy, spreading wide their branches clad in green-bronze leaves, had thrived to the elimination of spruces, except a few giants that could not be choked out.

   • 1953, Saul Bellow, chapter 26, in The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking Press, →OCLC, pages 518–519:

     […] wasn’t it gradual enough? I mean, the wrinkles coming, the gray choking out the black, the skin slackening and sinews getting stringy?

3. (transitive) To extinguish (fire) (by depriving it of oxygen or fuel).
   • 1922, D. H. Lawrence, “A Modern Lover”, in A Modern Lover and Other Stories‎, New York: Ballantine, published 1969, pages 2–3:

     Of many people, his friends, he had asked that they would kindle again the smouldering embers of their experience; he had blown the low fires gently with his breath, and had leaned his face towards their glow, and had breathed in the words that rose like fumes from the revived embers, till he was sick with the strong drug of sufferings and ecstasies and sensations, and the dreams that ensued. But most folk had choked out the fires of their fiercer experience with rubble of sentimentality and stupid fear, and rarely could he feel the hot destruction of Life fighting out its way.

4. (transitive, figurative) To destroy (something) by depriving it of a vital resource.

   Synonyms: smother, starve, stifle

   • 1915, Henry Scott Holland, chapter 10, in A Bundle of Memories‎, London: Wells Gardner, Darton:

     […] he would earnestly and pathetically plead that we should not, as Priests, suffer the serving of tables to choke out that inner life of the spirit which it was our first duty to feed and nourish.

5. (transitive) To prevent (light) from passing through.

   Synonyms: block, obstruct

   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, “Tallow and Birdseed”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode:

     Although this ivy had choked out what little light might have trickled into the room, it was not strong enough to prevent the birds from finding a way through and from visiting Lady Gertrude at any hour of night or day.

   • 1969, Philip Roth, “The Jewish Blues”, in Portnoy’s Complaint‎, New York: Vintage:

     The moment he pushes open the door the place speaks to me of prehistoric times […] when above the oozing bog that was the earth, swirling white gasses choked out the sunlight […]

6. (transitive) To cause (a person) to lose consciousness by applying a chokehold.
   • 2014, Gary Farmer, The Streets Are Blue, page 302:

     We got out of the car, the guy resisted, and I choked him out. The bar arm was the tool of choice in those days. If anybody resisted, we just choked him out.