Also 6 strangulacion. [ad. L. strangulātiōn-em, n. of action f. strangulāre: see STRANGLE v. Cf. F. strangulation (Cotgr.).]
1. The action or process of stopping respiration by compression of the air-passage, esp. by a sudden and violent compression of the windpipe; the condition of being strangled by such compression.
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, ix. (1870), 251. Surfeting causeth strangulacion and soden death.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., II. v. 84. So a sponge is mischievous,… because being received into the stomack it swelleth, and … induceth at last a strangulation.
1661. J. Childrey, Brit. Baconica, 40. Its tast is manifestly acide without astriction, but … causing an extream hot strangulation in the mouth.
1793. Beddoes, Scurvy, 81. Had he been carefully observed, his countenance would have shewn signs of strangulation.
1869. Dickens, Mut. Fr., I. iv. She stopped to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favourable to strangulation.
1874. Farrar, Christ, I. iv. 43. He had ordered the strangulation of his favourite wife.
1883. Encycl. Brit., XV. 781/1. [Medical Jurisprudence.] Strangulation may be accomplished by drawing a cord tightly round the neck, or by forcibly compressing the windpipe (throttling).
fig. 1831. Carlyle, Sartor Res., III. iv. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds … this Institute [for the Repression of Population].
† b. In full, strangulation of the matrix or womb: hysteria. (Cf. SUFFOCATION c.) Obs.
1601. Holland, Pliny, XXXII. x. II. 448. Castoreum … helpeth them when by rising of the mother they are in daunger of strangulation.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 218. The strangulation or suffocation of the matrix, which we call fits of the mother.
1634. T. Johnson, Parey’s Wks., XXIV. xliv. 939. The strangulation of the wombe.
2. Path. and Surg. Constriction (of a bodily organ, duct, etc.) so as to stop circulation or the passage of fluids.
1749. Gataker, trans. Le Dran’s Oper. Surg., 55. If the wound penetrates one of the musculi recti, the skin causes a strangulation in the first place.
1807. M. Baillie, Morbid Anat., 200. A rupture without any strangulation of the intestine.
1890. F. Taylor, Pract. Med. (1891), 765. There may be severe attacks of so-called strangulation of the [movable] kidney.
3. transf. Excessive constriction of a channel or passage.
1882. A. Geikie, Geol. Sketches, vi. 141. At a point about half a mile or less from the foot of the glacier the valley suddenly contracts…. At a point where the strangulation takes place the glacier lies in a kind of basin.
4. concr. A strangulated part; a constriction. spec. in Nat. Hist.
1828. Stark, Elem. Nat. Hist., II. 185. Head separated from the body by a strangulation.
