Definition of "stifle" []

• To interrupt or cut off (the voice, for example). (verb-transitive)
• To keep in or hold back; repress: stifled my indignation. (verb-transitive)
• To kill by preventing respiration; smother or suffocate. (verb-transitive)
• To feel smothered or suffocated by or as if by close confinement in a stuffy room. (verb-intransitive)
• To die of suffocation. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "This boar's savage charge at the camel was within a few yards of all of us, for every one was trying to entice him to come forth; after his headlong rush out of the bush he reared so upright in his attempt to reach his clumsy disturber, which was quite frantic from deadly fear, that he succeeded in ripping it in what in a horse would be termed the stifle joint."
• "And, horses can rest standing up, by locking their knee called a stifle joint in place, which explains why cowboys in the many Westerns movies we've watched are lounging at the campfire when their horses are up and willing to go."
• "Follow the lead of the private industry which you so easily stifle and as Archie told Edith "stifle" i.e. stifle yourself and leave the private sector alone."