# sigh

Pronunciation: US say "SY" /saɪ/; UK

## Noun

1. A deep, drawn-out breath taken in and released audibly, often expressing tiredness, frustration, grief, or relief.
   - Simple: A long, deep breath you let out when you feel tired, sad, or relieved.
   - _A heavy sigh escaped her as she read the bad news._
   - _He answered every question with a weary sigh._
7. An audible or written expression that gives voice to grief; a lament.
   - Simple: A sad sound or words that show deep grief or sorrow.
   - _The whole album feels like a sigh for a vanished world._
   - _His memoir is one long sigh over chances he never took._
10. Someone who is bored or lacking in enthusiasm. *(dialectal, Cockney)*
   - Simple: A person who feels bored or has no interest in things.
   - _Quit being a sigh and come dance with the rest of us._
   - _He's turned into a real sigh ever since the holidays ended._

## Verb

2. To take in a large breath and let it out audibly, especially as an involuntary expression of fatigue, grief, or frustration.
   - Simple: To breathe out slowly and loudly because you feel tired, sad, or upset.
   - _She sighed deeply before agreeing to take on the extra shift._
   - _The students sigh whenever another pop quiz is announced._
4. To make a soft, drawn-out sound resembling that of sighing, as the wind or a passing breeze does.
   - Simple: To make a soft, breathy sound like someone breathing out, the way the wind does.
   - _The breeze sighed among the reeds at the water's edge._
   - _Old houses sigh as the wind moves through their gaps._
5. To breathe out one's breath in the form of sighs.
   - Simple: To let your breath out in long, deep, sad-sounding breaths.
   - _He sighed a deep breath and leaned back in his chair._
   - _Singers learn to sigh their breath out evenly across a long phrase._
6. To express something by sighing, or to utter it with sighs.
   - Simple: To show or say what you feel by sighing.
   - _She sighed her weariness as she sank into the armchair._
   - _The old man would sigh his regrets every evening by the fire._
8. To grieve or lament; to feel and express sorrow.
   - Simple: To feel and show deep sadness about something.
   - _She sighed for the years that had slipped away unnoticed._
   - _Exiles sigh for homelands they may never see again._
9. To mourn or lament over someone or something, expressing grief through sighs.
   - Simple: To sadly mourn or grieve over a person or thing.
   - _She sighed the husband she had buried a decade before._
   - _Each generation seems to sigh the world its parents lost._

## Interjection

3. Used in casual writing to express fatigue, frustration, grief, or disappointment, standing in for the sound itself.
   - Simple: Used in writing to show that you feel tired, annoyed, or let down.
   - _Sigh. I really thought we'd win this time._
   - _The flight's been delayed for the third time. Sigh._

## Origin

**Meanings 2, 4–6, 8–9** — From Middle English sighen ('to sigh'), a back-formation from sighte, the past tense of siken, which came from Old English sīcan, from Proto-West Germanic *sīkan, and perhaps ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *seykʷ- ('to pour out').
**Meanings 1, 3, 7, 10** — From Middle English sighe ('a sigh'), which comes from the verb sighen ('to sigh').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/sigh (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).