Definition of "gag"

Blood may seep to the back of the throat and may clot, producing an “artificial gag” of clotted blood.

2014, Anil Aggrawal, APC Essentials of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, page 298

Civil Court blocks PM's gag on free speech

2021 August 6, Online Reporters, “Civil Court blocks PM's gag on free speech”, in Bangkok Post‎, retrieved 2021-08-06

We all know how genius “Kamp Krusty,” “A Streetcar Named Marge,” “Homer The Heretic,” “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” and “Mr. Plow” are, but even the relatively unheralded episodes offer wall-to-wall laughs and some of the smartest, darkest, and weirdest gags ever Trojan-horsed into a network cartoon with a massive family audience.

2012 May 20, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club‎

On Hacksaw Ridge, Oliver and his team of effects artisans devised gags for that spectacular flamethrower shot along with other devastating body and bullet hits, and several mortar and full-scale explosions, all aimed at communicating the reality of battle.

2016 November 3, Ian Failes, “How the King of Practical Effects Conquered ‘Hacksaw Ridge’”, in Inverse‎

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled, and sets it down to some superstition.

2008, Charles Lamb, Percy Fitzgerald, The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb - Volume 3, page 153

...and to take that fire behind the bony bars of the chest and into the tower of the windpipe, in one breath, before you choke on a gag of air thickened from the last breath of the executed the breathing of hot barrels and blood streaming on concrete,...

2013, Kathleen Cioffi, Alternative Theatre in Poland, page 123

The shallow water groups (Family Serranidae), including gag (Mycteroperca microlepis), black grouper (M. bonaci), scamp (M. phenax), and red grouper (Epinephalus morio), support major commercial and recreational fisheries in the southeastern United States.

1996, C.C. Koenig, “Reproduction in Gag (Mycteroperca microlepis) (Pisces: Serranidae) in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Consequences of Fishing Spawning Aggregations”, in Biology, Fisheries, and Culture of Tropical Groupers and Snappers

His empty stomach was suddenly full of butterflies, and for the first time since arriving here at scenic Durkin Grove Village, he felt an urge to gag himself. He would be able to think more clearly about this if he just stuck his fingers down his throat […]

2008, Stephen King, A Very Tight Place

“ […] Captain Markam had been found lying half-insensible, gagged and bound, on the floor of the sitting-room, his hands and feet tightly pinioned, and a woollen comforter wound closely round his mouth and neck ; whilst Mrs. Markham's jewel-case, containing valuable jewellery and the secret plans of Port Arthur, had disappeared. […] ”

1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 1, in The Fate of the Artemis‎

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead, / But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed; / Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

1906 August, Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”, in Poems, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, part 2, stanza II, page 49

[…] some have their mouths gagged to such a wideness, for a long time, whereat such quantities of water are poured in, that their bellies swell to a prodigious degree […]

1917, Francis Gregor (translator), De Laudibus Legum Angliae, Sir John Fortescue, written 1468–1471, first published 1543.

The time was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked.

c. 1840, Thomas Macaulay, Essay on Machiavelli

Vaid blasted the Bush administration for gagging doctors from discussing abortion.

1992 May 8, John Zeh, Gay Community News, page 3

I endeavoured what I could to soften off the affectation of her sudden change of Disposition; and I gagged the Gentleman with as much ease as my very little ease would allow me to assume.

1777, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin, published 2001, page 79