suffocate
v.v. to die or feel very uncomfortable because you cannot breathe. It can also mean to make something feel like it is being crushed or smothered.
v. to die or become unconscious as a result of an inability to breathe; to cause a lack of oxygen to a living organism. Often used figuratively to describe the feeling of being overwhelmed by excessive emotion or pressure.
The baby suffocated on a plastic bag.
The heavy smoke from the fire made it difficult for the residents to breathe and eventually suffocated them.
The dense fog suffocated the valley, creating an eerie silence that seemed to swallow the sound of the approaching storm.
The adjective is first attested in the 1420s, the verb in 1526; from Middle English suffocat(e) (“deprived of air, suffocated”), borrowed from Latin suffōcātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin suffōcō (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from sub- (“under, up to”) + fōx (“throat”, oblique stem in fōc-). Participial usage up until Early Modern English.