Breathe

How to spell breathe

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce breathe

What does breathe mean?

1. verbTo take air into the lungs and let it out again.

Breathe in a sentence

• The doctor asked him to breathe slowly through his nose.

• Divers learn to breathe calmly to conserve their air supply.

Where does breathe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The verb breathe grew out of the older noun breath, which in Old English was bræth and meant a smell, a vapour, or the warm air given off by a living body. Curiously, the noun came first and the verb was formed from it during the Middle English period, around the 1200s, when the meaning settled on the act of drawing air in and pushing it out. The added final e marks the long vowel and the softer th sound, distinguishing the verb breathe (with a buzzing /ð/) from the noun breath (with a short vowel and a hissing /th/). The root is purely native Germanic, with relatives in old words for steam and heat, since early speakers thought of breath as a kind of visible warmth on a cold morning. That single silent e is the whole spelling trap: it is the only thing separating the action from the thing breathed.

How the word is built

• breath (Old English bræth: vapour, exhalation)
• -e (verb-forming final e signalling the long vowel)