Suffocating

Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.

It is difficult to conceive a state of society in which a sufficient number of disinterested and civilized and imaginative people would, even if given the chance, voluntarily undertake what would be to them the suffocating boredom of government.

On the sudden outburst of a great fire, the passages are commonly filled with suffocating smoke, and often with flame, which render the hydrants in the internal passages inaccessible, and generally cut off communication with superior reservoirs, and of this there have been frequent large instances.

"From the Thursday before to that Time he was dying of an hard Cough and a suffocating Asthma with a Fever; but he felt no great Pain; he had the sweet Composure and easy Departure, for which he had entreated so often and fervently the sovereign Disposer of all Things.

But during this siege it is certain that Greek fire was used with dreadful effect upon the Turks, driving them back with its fierce flame and suffocating smoke as they attempted to cross the ditch and scale the walls, destroying their platforms and ladders, and consuming even the bodies of the dead.

For since there were many in a deep and narrow space, the sun and the suffocating heat were still distressing them at first, and the contrasting cold autumnal nights that ensued weakened their condition by the change, and since they had to do everything in the same space because of close confines, and furthermore the corpses were piled together on one another, dead from wounds and because of the change and so forth, there were unbearable smells, and at the same time they were afflicted with hunger and thirst (for eight months they gave each a cup of water and two cups of food a day), and of all the other miseries men thrust into such a place were likely to suffer there was not one that they did not encounter. For up to seventy days, the whole group lived like this; then, except for the Athenians and whatever Sikeliots or Italiots had joined them, they sold them all. The total number captured, while difficult to give out accurately, was nevertheless not fewer than seven thousand.