Breeze

How to spell breeze

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce breeze

What does breeze mean?

1. nounA light, gentle current of air.
2. nounSomething that is very easy to do.
3. verbTo move in a confident, carefree, and unhurried way.

Breeze in a sentence

• noun

  A cool breeze drifted through the open kitchen window.

• noun

  After months of practice, the driving test felt like a breeze.

• verb

  Top candidates tend to breeze through the first round of interviews.

• noun

  The washing dried quickly in the warm afternoon breeze.

• noun

  With the new software the monthly accounts became a breeze.

• verb

  He would often breeze into the office ten minutes late without apology.

Where does breeze come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

Breeze entered English in the middle of the 1500s, most likely from the old Spanish and Portuguese word brisa, which named the cool north-east wind that mariners relied on. Early English sailors wrote it as 'brize' or 'breze' and used it specifically for a steady sea wind before it broadened to mean any gentle, pleasant current of air. The figurative sense of something effortlessly easy, as in 'a breeze', grew naturally from the idea of something light and untroubled, and from there came the verb meaning to move along in a carefree, unhurried way. The spelling settled on the doubled 'ee' and the final 'ze', which is the small trap: the long vowel could just as easily have been written 'ea', and the soft ending could tempt a writer toward 'se'. Its Iberian seafaring roots are a useful reminder that this is one of several wind words English picked up from sailors.

How the word is built

• breeze (single root; from Spanish brisa, a light wind)