Exhaust

How to spell exhaust

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce exhaust

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exhaust mean?

1. verbTo use something up completely, or to drain a person of all their energy.
2. nounThe waste gases produced by an engine, or the pipe and system that carries them away.

Exhaust in a sentence

• verb

  Long shifts at the hospital can exhaust even the most dedicated nurse.

• noun

  The mechanic warned that the exhaust was leaking fumes into the cabin.

• verb

  The climbers knew the steep ascent would exhaust their water supply.

• noun

  Clouds of grey exhaust poured from the old bus as it pulled away.

Where does exhaust come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Exhaust comes from the Latin verb exhaurire, which combined ex- meaning 'out' with haurire meaning 'to draw up, drain, or empty'. The literal sense was to draw something out completely, as one might draw all the water from a well until nothing remained. English adopted it in the middle of the 1500s, first in the sense of drawing out or using up entirely, and the meaning of emptying a person of energy or a supply of its contents followed naturally from there. The silent 'h' tucked after the 'x' is the spelling trap, and it survives precisely because the Latin root haurire began with that letter. The mechanical noun, naming the spent gases drawn out of an engine, is a much later nineteenth-century development built on the same idea of drawing waste out.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• haust (from Latin haurire 'to draw, drain')