ahogar

A common, everyday verb: literally to drown someone or something in water (el niño casi se ahoga en la piscina), and figuratively to stifle, choke, or suppress — ahogar un grito, ahogar las lágrimas, ahogar una rebelión. Nearly always reflexive (ahogarse) when the subject drowns or chokes itself, non-reflexive when someone or something else is the cause. In some older texts ahogar also turns up as an archaic synonym for rehogar (to lightly fry or sauté), a distinct, now-obsolete culinary sense.

• El nadador casi se ahoga en el río. — The swimmer nearly drowned in the river.
• Ahogó un grito de sorpresa. — She stifled a gasp of surprise.
• El gobierno ahogó las protestas con rapidez. — The government stifled the protests quickly.

Forgetting the reflexive se when the subject drowns rather than drowns someone else — ahogó means "he/she drowned someone," while se ahogó means "he/she drowned" (as the victim); mixing these up reverses who's doing the drowning.

• book El ahogado más hermoso del mundo — A celebrated 1968 short story by Gabriel García Márquez, published in the 1972 collection La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada — its title uses ahogado, the past participle of ahogar, for the body of a drowned man washed up in a small coastal village.