ppl. a. [f. STIFLE v.1 + -ED1.]
† 1. Strangled. Obs.
1562. Cooper, Answ. Def. Truth, iii. 9 b. To make men forbeare stifled meates.
2. In the ordinary senses of the verb: Suffocated, smothered, suppressed, etc.
a. 1643. W. Cartwright, To Lydia, iii. Poems (1651), 243. I hate a secret stifled flame, Let yours and mine have Voice, and Name.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 381. Such stifl’d Noise as the close Furnace hides.
1817. Shelley, Rev. Islam, VI. xii. 5. The blood … of the dead and dying … Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen Under the feet.
1820. Byron, Mar. Fal., IV. i. Turbulent mutterers of stifled treason.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, V. iv. ‘Hah, hah!’ said Morley, with a sort of stifled laugh.
3. Devoid of fresh air, close, stuffy.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, ch. xiii. In a stifled and subterranean atmosphere.
1863. Hawthorne, Our Old Home, Pilgr. Boston (1879), 175. We were shown into a small, stifled parlor.
