Strangle - strangulate

If you use the verb strangulate in the belief that it is a more formal and superior way of saying strangle, you will not be the first. But you will be wrong.

• To strangle is 'to kill by constricting the throat and preventing the victim from breathing'.
• To strangulate is also 'to constrict', but in a less usually fatal sense. A doctor, gardener or vet may strangulate an organ or a growth by preventing the circulation of blood or sap to it, so that it drops off without risk to the organism that owns it. The process of strangulation may happen accidentally, e.g. by a twist in the digestive system that blocks circulation from reaching some other part which has been caught up in it. A strangulated hernia is a not uncommon form of abdominal hernia, or rupture.

The use of strangulate to mean strangle is recorded; but it is only rare. In modern academic writing, it is an inaccuracy, an error. Do not commit this error.