It's true that a person would probably not encounter this unless they were working on a car made pre-1975 or so.
On very old cars, the choke was operated manually by pulling on a plunger that was attached by a wire to the choke plate. In newer ones, like my '72 Beetle, the choke was "automatic." It is opened slowly by a heating element that receives current as soon as the car is started. It is designed to open at about the same rate the engine warms up. Regardless, you have to "set" it, to make sure it is in the proper cold position, which is almost, but not completely, closed. You want to choke most of the air off to enrich the gas/air mixture for easy starting, but not all of the air.
Anyway, at first I thought you might be talking about something called a "choke" that might exist in some higher math, like, say, topology, that I wasn't aware of. Or some obscure thing in QM or String Theory.