[f. the vb. See note on sense 5.]
1. What chokes or impedes respiration: † a. Chokes: the quinsy. Obs.
1562. Turner, Herbal, II. 144 a. It will heale ye diseases of the sciatica and ye squynansie or chokes. Ibid., II. 164 a. Good for the squinancie or choukes.
b. slang. Prison bread.
1884. Salvation War, ii. 20. He had no food but gruel and brown ‘choke.’
2. The action and noise of choking.
1839. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xii. Miss Squeers … was … taken with one or two chokes and catchings of breath.
1870. Swinburne, Ess. & Stud. (1875), 63. Men born dumb who express by grunts and chokes the inexpressible eloquence which is not in them.
† 3. A condition in which progress is entirely obstructed; a block; a dead-lock. Obs.
1674. N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 57. As to a number beyond the numbers of Arithmetick, I … ask, Whether it will be even or odd? if it be either, we have the same choaks for it that we had before; and if it be neither, then ’tis no number.
1725. Wodrow, Corr. (1843), II. 58. Some … who are and will in a choak be found as hearty for King George as any in Britain. Ibid. (1729), III. 428. Pray for the Assembly; they are coming to a choak.
4. A constriction; the part of the paper tube of a firework where it is compressed to form a stoppage. Cf. CHOKE v. 13. and CHOKE-BORE.
1786. Sir B. Thompson, in Phil. Trans., LXXVI. 287. The tube or cylinder … was … perfectly cylindrical … without any choak.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Choke, the nip of a rocket.
5. The mass of immature florets with their scales and down in the center of an artichoke head.
[This use is partly at least due to popular analysis of ARTI-CHOKE (q.v.), as having in its heart a ‘choke.’]
1736. Bailey, Houshold Dict., 54. If many of them [leaves] be spread from the top, then the choke is shot so much, that much of the heart of the artichoke being drawn out, the bottom will be the thinner.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., vi. 65. The choke, which we take out of the middle, is an assemblage of florets which are beginning to be formed.
1888. Sir W. Harcourt, in Daily News, 21 June, 5/8. We are stripping the artichoke very fast. But we shall soon come I think to the choke.
b. transf. to similar things.
1880. Baring-Gould, Mehalah, x. (1884), 141. They [girls] are roses up to marriage and after that are hips, with hard red skins outside and choke and roughness within.
