1.   Tempers frayed in the stifling atmosphere of blaring speakers and flashing lights.

2.   Brown and Lynch indicated Monday that the Sixers would be pressing the Raptors more from the beginning of the game, in hopes of reversing the stifling atmosphere.

3.   In such a stifling atmosphere, inertia thrives, no matter what the slogans on the walls proclaim.

4.   Like David Del Tredici, a fellow Princetonian, Davies sought to escape from what he perceived as a stifling atmosphere by embracing elements of tonality and popular music.

5.   The somewhat stifling atmosphere created by the Victorian Era is not missed.

6.   We have created a stifling atmosphere in this country where there is too much tolerance of the intolerable and a growing acceptance of the unacceptable.

7.   Turkmenistan, a one-party state, has the most stifling atmosphere.