breathe

verb

SayBREETH/bɹið/UK/bɹiːð/

Formsbreathes, breathing, breathed

Often confused with breath

16 meanings of breathe

Practice

1
verbintransitive
To draw air into the lungs and push it back out, taking in oxygen and getting rid of waste gases.
Doctors told him to breathe deeply during the examination.
Divers learn to breathe steadily to conserve their air supply.
Similarrespire
Note
The verb is younger than its noun. Middle English brethen was formed from breth, "breath", and it pushed out older verbs for the same act: Old English ēþian and orþian, and anden from Old Norse anda. That history doubles as a spelling guide. Breath, the noun, is the root, and breathe, the verb built on it, is the one that carries the final -e.
2
verbintransitive
To push air out of the lungs; to exhale.
Breathe out fully before taking your next deep breath.
He breathed gently on his hands to warm them.
Similarexhale, blow, puff
Oppositeinhale
3
verbtransitive
To draw something, such as air, smoke, or dust, into the lungs.
Try not to breathe the dust while sanding the floor.
He breathed the fresh mountain air deep into his chest.
Similarinhale
Oppositeexhale
4
verbtransitive
To take in a gas, especially oxygen, in order to stay alive.
Climbers at high altitude breathe bottled oxygen to survive.
Without plants, we could not breathe the oxygen our cells require.
Similarinhale
Oppositeexhale
Note
Here the object is the gas a creature lives on. We breathe oxygen, and speculation about alien life imagines beings that breathe chlorine or methane. Compare breathing in smoke or dust, where the object is simply whatever enters the lungs, wanted or not. You breathe oxygen in order to live; you breathe smoke in spite of it.
5
verbintransitive
To take in needed gases and release waste gases, in a way similar to how lungs work.
Many insects breathe through openings called spiracles rather than lungs.
Earthworms breathe through their moist skin.
Similarrespire
6
verbintransitive
To exchange gases with the surrounding environment, taking some in and giving others off.
Gills allow fish to breathe in water.
Trees breathe through pores in their bark and leaves.
Similarrespire
Note
Nothing here needs to be alive. Clothing is the familiar case: garments made of certain materials breathe well and keep the skin relatively dry during exercise. The usual pairing is breathe well, a quality claimed for a material. Said of a fabric, the verb means letting air and moisture pass through, not anything to do with lungs.
7
verbfigurativelyintransitive
To be alive; to go on living.
He swore that while he still breathed, the cause would never die.
As long as we breathe, there is hope for change.
Similarlive, exist, survive
Oppositedie
Note
Poets have long let the breath stand for the whole of life. Shakespeare writes "I am in health, I breathe," and Walter Scott, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), asks "Breathes there a man with soul so dead?" In everyday speech the figure settles into vows of persistence, such as as long as I breathe or while I still breathe, usually tied to a promise or a refusal.
8
verbtransitive
To utter something very softly, as if in a whisper.
He breathed a quiet prayer before stepping onto the stage.
She leaned close to breathe a secret in his ear.
Similarwhisper, murmur, mutter
Oppositeshout, yell
9
verbtransitive
To give a strong impression of a quality, as if giving it off.
The whole novel breathes nostalgia for a vanished world.
These ancient streets breathe history at every corner.
Similarexude, radiate, evoke, suggest
10
verbfigurativelytransitive
To devote yourself so completely to an activity that it seems to fill your whole life.
He breathes politics, reading about it from dawn to midnight.
The best chefs truly breathe their craft.
Similarlive

11
verbtransitive
To send something out from the mouth in the way air is pushed out when exhaling.
The dragon in the story breathes flames at any knight who approaches.
In freezing weather, runners breathe clouds of white mist.
Similaremit, exhale, puff, spew, blow
Note
The object is whatever comes out: a dragon breathes fire, and flowers breathe a heady perfume. Fantasy stretches the pattern freely. Timothy Groves's The Book Of Creatures (2012) has drakes that breathe fire, ice, acid and lightning. Once the thing breathed out is a quality rather than a substance, the verb shades into its "exude an impression" meaning.
12
verbintransitive
To move or pass gently and quietly, like a soft breath, drifting or blowing softly.
A soft breeze breathed over the still water at dawn.
Evening air seemed to breathe through the quiet garden.
Similarblow, waft, drift, whisper, sigh
Note
In the poetic sense, wind, air and scent do the breathing, and the verb usually takes a preposition: through the trees, upon us, from the shore. Shakespeare's The Tempest has "The air breathes upon us here most sweetly". Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage offers "There breathes a living fragrance from the shore," where the inverted there breathes gives the line its lift. Outside such description, blow is the plainer choice.
13
verbtransitive
To let a horse pause and rest so that it can recover its breath.
The huntsman paused to breathe the horses before the next field.
She breathed her mare in the shade before riding on.
Similarrest
Note
The rider is the one who decides when the pause comes. You breathe your horse, and you need to do it more often at higher altitudes, where an animal winds faster. Do not confuse this with the exercising sense, which works an animal until it is winded. The same verb can both rest a horse and tire it, and only context tells you which is meant.
14
verbtransitive
To exercise someone or something briskly, working them until they are out of breath.
The trainer breathed the horses with a brisk gallop across the field.
Such a demanding drill will breathe the strongest players.
Similarwind, exercise, tire, exhaust
15
verbarchaicintransitive
To pause and rest until normal breathing returns.
The travelers paused to breathe awhile beneath the spreading oak.
Well! breathe awhile, and then to it again!
c. 1597, William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth,”
Note
An archaic pause for breath, at home in romance and Elizabethan drama. Malory's knights fight on without rest in Le Morte Darthur (1485), and Shakespeare's Henry IV has "Well! breathe awhile, and then to it again!" The use is now rare. In modern English, say catch one's breath, and keep breathe awhile for deliberate period flavor. The horse-handler's transitive use keeps the idea alive.
16
verbtransitive
To bring scripture into being through divine inspiration, as God working through human writers.
Pastors teach that God breathed the scriptures, guiding every author's hand.
They believe the Spirit continues to breathe the sacred text for each generation.
Similarinspire
Note
A theological use with God as the one who breathes, found chiefly in Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity. It appears in the active voice, as in "God, who breathed the Scriptures," and in the passive, as in John Howard Hinton's 1850 formula "All scripture is divinely breathed." Jay E. Adams (2010) builds an argument on its order: because God breathed the Scriptures, they are useful, not the other way around.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of breathe apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

From Middle English brethen ("to breathe, blow, exhale"), derived from Middle English breth ("breath"). It replaced older words such as Middle English ethien (from Old English ēþian and orþian) and anden (from Old Norse anda), all meaning "to breathe."