Choke & Choker

Choke (pronounced chohk)

(1) To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe (solid & semi-solid objects such as food or fumes or particles in the air which cause the throat to constrict); asphyxiate, strangle, suffocate, throttle.

(2) Full to the point of obstruction (usually as “choked with”); block up, bung up, clog, congest, jam, obstruct, stop up.

(3) In forestry, to seize a log, felled tree etc with a chain, cable, or the like, so as to facilitate removal.

(4) In engineering, any mechanism which, by narrowing or blocking a passage, regulates the flow of air, gas etc.

(5) In fluid mechanics (of a duct), to reach a condition of maximum flow-rate (immediately before the choke-point), due to the flow at the narrowest point of the duct becoming sonic.

(6) In electronics, an inductor having a relatively high impedance, used to prevent the passage of high frequencies or to smooth the output of a rectifier (also called the choke-coil.

(7) In combat sports (wrestling, karate etc), a type of hold (of the throat) which can result in strangulation.

(8) A constriction at the muzzle end of a shotgun barrel which varies the spread of the shot.

(9) To enrich the fuel mixture of an ICE (internal-combustion engine) by diminishing the air supply to the carburetor (a choke a specific component of a carburetor althouh the term is used loosely).

(10) To make or install a choke in a device.

(11) To stop by or as if by strangling or stifling:

(12) To stop by filling; obstruct; clog

(13) To suppress a feeling, emotion, etc (often as “choke up”, choke down” or “choke back”).

(14) In sport, to grip a bat, racket, club etc) farther than usual from the end of the handle (to shorten the grip).

(15) To suffer from or as from strangling or suffocating.

(16) To become obstructed, clogged, or otherwise stopped.

(17) To become too tense or nervous to perform well (used most often in competitive sport, specifically in the sense losing by performing badly at a critical point, when in a winning position).

(18) In slang, the inedible centre of the head of an artichoke.

1150–1200: From the Middle English choken & cheken, a variant of achoken & acheken, from the Old English ācēocian (to suffocate), from the Old English ċēoce & ċēace (jaw, cheek) and cognate with the Old Norse kōk (gullet) and the Icelandic kok (throat) & koka (to gulp).  The transitive verb emerged in the late thirteenth century and by the late 1300s was being used in the sense of “to stop the breath by preventing air from entering the windpipe”; “to make to suffocate, deprive of the power of drawing breath” and that was used of persons as well as swallowed objects.  In that. It was a shortened form of the twelfth century acheken, from Old English ācēocian, probably from the root of ċēoce & ċēace (the spelling ceoke was also used).  In the narrow technical sense “choking” has been the cause of death of a number of rock stars including the guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Led Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham (1948-1980) and AC/DC’s vocalist Bon Scott (1946-1980) although in all cases the critical “inhalation of vomit” which induced them to choke to death was caused by substance abuse.  In the same vein, the singer Janis Joplin suffered a fatal head injury in a fall while affected by drugs and alcohol; all these deaths may be regarded as “death by misadventure”.  The alternative forms choak & choake are obsolete; chock is dialectal.  Choke is a noun & verb, chokage & choker are nouns, choking is a noun & verb, chokeable is an adjective and choked is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is chokes.

The intransitive verb dates from the early fifteenth century when it was used to mean “gasp for breath”, in line with the figurative use in agriculture & horticulture (the Biblical notion of weeds stifling the growth of useful plants a Biblical image).  The term “choked up” (overcome with emotion and unable to speak) seems first to have been documented in 1896, the use possibly related to the earlier use of the word (choke-pear (1530s), crab-apple (1610s), choke-cherry (1785)) of fruits with an untypical degree of astringency and it’s thought the botanical link inspired Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) to define the figurative use as “any aspersion or sarcasm, by which another person is put to silence”.  The noun chokage emerged in the 1840s while the term chokehold (tight grip around a person's neck to restrict breathing) was first used in 1962. The idea of a “choke” in sport in the sense of “losing by performing badly at a critical point, when in a winning position” dates from 1907 and comes from baseball where it referred to a “clutch hitter” (the hitter at the plate upon whom winning depended) “choking up” and failing to perform; the phrase “to fail in the clutch” similar in meaning.

Interchangeable choke for shotgun.

Although (except in the odd, curious niche), rendered obsolete by fuel injection, the carburetor is a device which continues to exert a fascination in those with a fondness for mechanical intricacy and an inclination to tinker.  Carburetors are devices used on ICEs (internal combustion engine) to produce the mix of fuel (typically petrol (gas)) & air required for combustion and in mainstream use they lasted into the twenty-first century.  Most carburetor were fitted with a choke, an instrument controlled by the driver and what the choke did was provide an enriched mixture (ie more fuel, less air) to make starting easier from cold.  The term “choke” was already known in engineering but the most direct comparison was probably from ballistics, chokes (some types described as “adjustable chokes”) fitted to shotguns as early as 1875.  A shotgun’s choke is a device (or constriction) at the muzzle end of the barrel which controls the spread (or pattern) of the shot as it exits the barrel.  By altering the spread, chokes allow shooters to customize their gun's performance for different purposes (ie hunting, target shooting, home defense et al).  When a shotgun cartridge is discharged, the begin to spread out immediately upon leaving the barrel (in slang they’re sometimes called “scatter guns” and a choke modifies this spread by narrowing or widening the diameter of the barrel at the muzzle.  This affects the density and size of the shot pattern at different distances.

Pellet field streams using various chokes.

In the industry, the classification of chokes is determined by the extent to which they narrow the barrel and the most common types are: (1) Cylinder: these are not fitted with a choke and thus there’s no constriction; they’re most suitable for short-range shooting. (2) Improved Cylinder: These have a slight constriction, thereby offering a moderately wide spread suitable for short and medium range targets. (3) Modified: A variation of the Improved with more constriction, lengthening the effective range.  (4) Full: Thos provides a narrow bore, creating a tight pattern for long-range accuracy, (5) Extra full: As the name implies, an even smaller bore, popular for turkey hunting or precision shooting.  There are also (1) fixed chokes (integral with the barrel and thus unchangeable) and (2) interchangeable chokes which are detachable inserts a shooter can swap according to the shooting to be done.

1971 Chrysler Charger E38 (choke knob arrowed).

Confusingly, although it was almost always the case a choke would be part of a carburetor (cable activated by a control in the driver’s cabin), the word “choke” was also used of carburetors in a different context and potentially more confusingly still, when used thus, it was often synonymous (and sometimes used interchangeably) with “throat”, “barrel” and “venturi”.  In the now arcane world of carburetors inhabited by those familiar with the things, this casual use isn’t a problem because the four words are known to refer to different components, although even experts rarely dwell on the details: (1) The throat is the main passage (there can be as many as four in a single carburetor, not necessarily all of the same bore (although if there are four they are usually sized in pairs)) through which air flows and a throat encompasses the entire internal air pathway.  (2) The barrel is the cylindrical tube that houses the throat, venturi and in many cases the throttle valve; the barrel is the structural element through which the air and fuel are mixed and delivered.

Weber-style IDF twin choke downdraft carburettor with chrome ram tubes (left), pair of Weber 40 IDA triple barrel carburetors (centre) and Holley Dominator 4500 1150 CFM Square Bore four barrel carburetor with fitting kit.

In US use, “barrel” is the most common way of describing carburetors (two barrel, four barrel) and the standard abbreviation is “bbl”.  That seems inexplicable by the usual conventions of English but is a historic legacy from the petroleum industry where it was used to denote a barrel of oil.  The specification and paint scheme of early oil barrels were standardized by Standard Oil, and the abbreviation “bbl” became widely used to signify a “standardized blue barrel”, hence the apparently superfluous “b”; over time, “bbl”, became the universal shorthand for barrel, even outside the oil industry. (3) The venturi is a specific narrowing of a carburetor's throat or barrel, the primary purpose of which is to create a pressure drop due to the “venturi effect” (a phenomenon of fluid dynamics) in which as air flows through the narrowed section, its velocity increases and its pressure decreases (surface friction at this scale not significant).  The pressure drop induced by the venturi effect draws fuel from the fuel bowl into the air stream for mixing and atomization.  (4) Choke in this context is simply another way of saying “barrel” and the choice is dictated by local conventions of use; In Europe it was common to speak of a “two choke” carburetor whereas if used by a US manufacturer this would be a “two barrel”.  There was trans-Atlantic respect for this tradition and in both communities tend to use the correct terminology of each other’s devices although hot-rodders in the US did like slang such as the evocative “four-holer”.  Despite that, Ford did for a while muddy the waters by using the terms to 2V and 4V (ie 2 venturi & 4 venturi) to refer both to two & four barrel carburetors but also the two different cylinder heads designed for each.  People got used to that but it did latter induce confusion elsewhere when 2V & 4V came to be understood as “two valve” & “four valve” (ie per cylinder).

Model Tessa Fowler (b 1992) wearing fabric chokers.

Choker (pronounced choh-ker)

(1) In fashion, a piece of jewelry or ornamental fabric, worn as a necklace or neckerchief, snug around the throat (use based on the “choker chain” used to restrain dogs).

(2) One who, or that which, chokes or strangles.

(3) A person administering a choking device (depending on context, either a class or machine operator or a murderous strangler).

(4) A neckcloth or high collar.

(5) As choker chain, a dog collar designed to pinch or squeeze the dog or other animal when the leash is pulled.

(6) In forestry, a chain or cable used to haul logs to a transportation point.

(7) In slang, any disappointing or upsetting circumstance.

(8) In slang, the traditional clerical collar worn by Christian clergy.

(9) In slang, a cigarette.

(10) A person who pratices autoerotic asphyxiation or paraphilia, a practice where someone temporarily cuts off their own air supply by means of a ligature or some other sort of self-asphyxiation device during sex or masturbation.

(11) In sport, one who “chokes” (losing by performing badly at a critical point, when in a winning position).

1550s: The construct was choke + -er.  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The noun emerged in the 1550s in the sense of “one who chokes” an agent noun from the verb and from 1848 it was used to mean “large neckerchief”.  The use to mean “a kind of necklace worn against the throat” dates from 1928.  Choker is a noun; the noun plural is chokers.

Lindsay Lohan with choker at Moschino Fashion Show, London, June 2014.  A choker is a decorative accessory worn around the neck and differs from a necklace in that it sits higher (typically mid-way up the neck) and fits snugly.

In fashion, choker is a clipping of “choker chain”, a dog collar designed to pinch or squeeze the dog or other animal when the leash is pulled.  Chokers can be for any material (fabric, leather (studded varieties popular), metal etc), and are sometimes adorned with jewels or logos.  There are also chokers with LED (light-emitting diodes) displays in a variety of colors which are powered by a small button-battery, rechargeable via a USB (universal serial bus) port.  According to a normally reliable source (Urban Dictionary), a choker is (1) a symbol used by emos to convey a desire to engage in self-harm or even suicide or (2) a way certain young ladies advertize their especial fondness for and skill in performing fellatio (this should be treated as a gaboso (Generalized Association Based On Single-Observation).  In the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline (or Dominance) & Submission (or Sadomasochism) community, chokers are sometimes used as the “submissive collar”, given by dominants as a symbol of possession and sometimes augmented with a leash for purpose of public display.

Anna Teshu (b 1994, right), in choker and on leash with ex-boyfriend Nathan Riely (b 1988. left) while role-playing as a dog and handler.  If consensual, the "leashed partner" thing is a kink and a genuine ALC (alternative lifestyle choice), albeit one which has attracted some criticism, some suggesting the "leashed" are suffering from "false consciousness", an idea explored in other contexts by both Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).