strangle

From Middle English stranglen, from Old French estrangler, from Latin strangulō, strangulāre, from Ancient Greek στραγγαλόομαι (strangalóomai, “to be strangled”), from στραγγάλη (strangálē, “a halter”); compare στραγγός (strangós, “twisted”) and string. Displaced Middle English wirien, awurien (“to strangle”) (> English worry).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈstɹæŋɡ(ə)l/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈstɹæŋɡəl/
• Rhymes: -æŋɡəl
• Hyphenation: stran‧gle

strangle (third-person singular simple present strangles, present participle strangling, simple past and past participle strangled)

 

1. (transitive) To kill someone by squeezing the throat so as to cut off the oxygen supply; to choke, suffocate or throttle.

   She strangled her husband and dissolved the body in acid.

   • 1936, Robert Frost, “The Vindictives”, in A Further Range:

     And his subjects wrung all they could wring / Out of temple and palace and store. / But when there seemed no more to bring, / His captors convicted the king / Of once having started a war, / And strangled the wretch with a string.

2. (transitive) To stifle or suppress.

   He strangled a scream.

3. (intransitive) To be killed by strangulation, or become strangled.

   The cat slipped from the branch and strangled on its bell-collar.

4. (intransitive) To be stifled, choked, or suffocated in any manner.
   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

     Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, / […] And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

   • 1626, Ovid, “The Eighth Booke”, in George Sandys, transl., Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished […], London: […] William Stansby, →OCLC, page 165:

     Her, vvhom his furie hath from earth exil'd, / And in the ſtrangling vvaters drencht his child; […]

     An adjective use.

• strangulate
• strangulation

strangle (plural strangles)

1. (finance) A trading strategy using options, constructed through taking equal positions in a put and a call with different strike prices, such that there is a payoff if the underlying asset's value moves beyond the range of the two strike prices.

• asphyxiate
• choke
• gag
• querk
• suffocate
• throttle

• “strangle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “strangle”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “strangle”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Largents, Stangler, langrets, tanglers, trangles

strangle

1. Alternative form of stranglen