stifling
/ˈstʌɪf(ə)lɪŋ
/ /ˈstʌɪflɪŋ/adjective
1(Of heat, air, or a room) very hot and causing difficulties in breathing; suffocating: stifling heat the loft is stifling in summer...
- Lizzy had to leave the room which had become too stifling.
- I wanted to ask how she had endured the frustration, the exasperation, the stifling air, the imprisonment.
- The steady thump of drums beat a deadly rhythm in the stifling heat.
2Making one feel constrained or oppressed: the stifling formality of her family life...
- The hallmark problem of a monopolist is its stifling effect on innovation.
- The level of control exercised by the parties was absolutely stifling.
- Naturally, they can hardly accept Shen's stifling love.
Derivatives
stiflingly
[as submodifier]: a stiflingly hot day...
- The summers are stiflingly hot and the colony becomes infested with mosquitoes.
- And even when their conversations veer too far into existential, meaning-of-life territory, the sharp banter between the pair keeps their exchanges from becoming too mannered or stiflingly intellectual.
- Perhaps that was why I had enjoyed tormenting him the most out of all the boys - because his retorts were so completely opposite from anything I might have heard someone say to me in the stiflingly polite atmosphere of the palace.