Breathtaking

How to spell breathtaking

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce breathtaking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does breathtaking mean?

1. adjectiveSo beautiful, impressive, or astonishing that it briefly leaves you unable to react.

Breathtaking in a sentence

• The view from the summit was absolutely breathtaking after the long climb.

• The wedding photographer captured a breathtaking shot of the coastline at sunset.

Where does breathtaking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from two very old native English words: breath, from the Old English braeth, which originally meant 'smell, scent, or vapour' before it settled on the air drawn in and out of the lungs, and taking, the present participle of take, a verb English absorbed from the Old Norse taka during the Viking period. The image behind the word is the very literal one of something so striking that it seems to seize or stop the breath. It came together as a single adjective in the nineteenth century, when writers used it for scenery, beauty, and dramatic events that left an onlooker momentarily unable to breathe. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the 'breath' part keeps the short 'ea' of breath, not the longer 'breathe', and the seam where breath meets taking hides a 'th' immediately followed by a 't'. Remembering that it is plainly breath plus taking, with no letters dropped at the join, keeps the spelling honest.

How the word is built

• breath (noun: air drawn into the lungs)
• tak(e) (verb)
• -ing (adjective-forming suffix)