choke back

phrasal verb

choked back; choking back; chokes back

: to have difficulty not showing or expressing (tears, rage, anger, etc.)

He was choking back tears as he talked about his late wife.

She struggled to choke back her anger as she listened to their criticisms.

Examples of choke back in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The other fathers nodded solemnly, as Tom and I choked back laughs since Dad was wearing olive green rubber goggles and holding a cold can of beer against his bare chest. —David McGrath, Chicago Tribune, 11 June 2025

At the rally Wednesday evening, his daughter Stephanie Lopez choked back tears. —Kyle Martin, Mercury News, 5 June 2025

Throughout her testimony, Ventura occasionally dabbed her eyes and nose with a tissue, and became emotional and choked back tears while talking about the freak-offs, the Washington Post reported. —Conor Murray, Forbes.com, 15 May 2025

About an hour later, 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost emerged on the central balcony of the basilica in Vatican City as the new leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination — wearing the white papal cassock for the first time and choking back tears. —Mariel Padilla, Them., 8 May 2025

Many episodes later, as Dedra suffers a crushing setback, Gough performs her attempts to choke back tears and still her trembling hands with an almost violent desperation. —Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 21 Apr. 2025

Asked whether his father could have foreseen what his turnpike dream had become, Charlie Costar Jr. choked back tears. —Miami Herald Archives, Miami Herald, 23 Jan. 2025

Jill Biden—who reportedly gave her husband some of the worst advice of this American century, already somehow a quarter spent—looked stricken, and sometimes seemed, at least to my eyes, to be choking back tears. —Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2025

At that point, Robert appeared to once again choke back tears but pulled himself together. —Rachel Desantis, People.com, 28 Nov. 2024

Rhymes for choke back

• almanac
• camelback
• cardiac
• carryback
• cluniac
• diamondback
• lumberjack
• maniac
• paperback
• piggyback
• quarterback
• saddleback