0 to (cause to) be unable to breathe because you have no air -- （使）窒息，（使）喘不上气
1 to prevent something from happening, being expressed, or continuing -- 阻止；压制，抑制；扼杀
Debate on important ethical and political issues should not be stifled in deference to "experts" - not even to expert bioethicists, clinicians, and public health authorities.
Open enrolment is assumed throughout because otherwise competition would be stifled; however, open enrolment makes self-selection of risks possible, which induces additional regulation.
His second interruption, which finally stifles her, is especially powerful by virtue of its rhythmic and harmonic incongruity with her song.
When colonists first arrived in the new world, they found plenty of land an ocean away from the old world's stifling seigniorial rights.
The audience's response was stifled laughter; the director's intentions were surely otherwise.
While technical limitations hampered the development of mechanical cotton harvesters, social pressures of small farms and the sharecropping system stifled its adoption36.
Consensus has been viewed here as a negative factor stifling debate.
The past had become a dead weight that held society back; it shackled people's minds and stifled their sense of patriotism.
