All 22 Uses of

stifle
in
Les Miserables

to stifle, to yell, to writhe;†
Chpt 2.1

stifle = suppress (prevent something or decrease its development)

To have himself nailed up in a case and carried off like a bale of goods, to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without dying— this was one of Jean Valjean's gloomy talents.†
Chpt 2.8

While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only managed to say from time to time, "I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles."†
Chpt 1.2

The small effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up behind her with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down, picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly into her back, between her bare shoulders.†
Chpt 1.5

He was carried away, at first, by the instinct of self-preservation; he rallied all his ideas in haste, stifled his emotions, took into consideration Javert's presence, that great danger, postponed all decision with the firmness of terror, shook off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a warrior picks up his buckler.†
Chpt 1.7

And the school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under their veils; charming little stifled laughs which made the vocal mothers frown.†
Chpt 2.6

there he is, stifled,' I should have gone raving mad, mad enough for a strait jacket.†
Chpt 2.8

He read the journals, the newspapers, the gazettes as he said, stifling outbursts of laughter the while.†
Chpt 3.2 *

That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter.†
Chpt 3.7

Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper.†
Chpt 3.7

We were not made—" Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst out laughing, saying, with an intonation which contained every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:— "Bah!"†
Chpt 3.8

Thus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing those beneath him and stifling under those on top of him, endeavoring in vain to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.†
Chpt 3.8

An acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak, dull groans.†
Chpt 4.14

A sort of stifled fire darted from his eyes, which were filled with an inward look.†
Chpt 5.1

He went to the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling, and, erect before the darkness, he began to talk into the street, to the night: "Pierced, sabred, exterminated, slashed, hacked in pieces!†
Chpt 5.3

Definitions:

(1) (stifle as in: stifling the urge)
to suppress (prevent something or decrease its development) -- often political freedom
(2) (stifle as in: the heat is stifling)
to make breathing difficult or impossible -- often from heat or humidity
(3) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Much more rarely, to stifle is used in the context of anatomy to refer to a four-legged animal's equivalent of the human knee (the joint between the upper and lower leg).