# sneeze

Pronunciation: say "SNEEZ" /sniːz/

## Verb

1. To suddenly expel air from the nose and mouth as a reflex caused by irritation in the nose.
   - Simple: To suddenly push air out of your nose and mouth because something tickles inside your nose.
   - _Bright sunlight can make some people sneeze._
   - _He sneezed loudly during the lecture._
3. To expel or displace air, mucus, or similar matter from the nose or mouth by sneezing.
   - Simple: To push air or snot out of your nose or mouth by sneezing.
   - _He sneezed crumbs across the kitchen table._
   - _Patients are told to sneeze any loose mucus into a tissue._
4. To expel air from the nose as though it were irritated, even when it is not.
   - Simple: To push air out of your nose like a sneeze, even when nothing is bothering it.
   - _Children sometimes sneeze on purpose just to be funny._
   - _She faked a stumble and then sneezed dramatically for the camera._

## Noun

2. A single instance of sharply expelling air from the nose and mouth as a reflex.
   - Simple: A sudden burst of air from the nose and mouth.
   - _A single sneeze can release thousands of tiny droplets into the air._
   - _She stifled the sneeze, and her ears popped._

## Origin

From Middle English snesen, an alteration of earlier fnesen, from Old English fnēosan ("to sneeze, snort"), going back through Proto-Germanic *fneusaną to Proto-Indo-European *pnew- ("to breathe, pant, snort, sneeze"). It is related to dialectal Dutch fniezen and Old Norse fnýsa ("to snort"). The shift from fn- to sn- may be due to the uncommon initial fn- being misread as ſn- (sn- written with a long s), the same change seen in snore and snort; the fn- forms fell out of use in the 1400s.

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