Expiration

How to spell expiration

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce expiration

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does expiration mean?

1. nounThe point at which something comes to an end or ceases to be valid, such as a contract, licence, or product date.
2. nounThe act of breathing out, expelling air from the lungs.

Expiration in a sentence

• Check the expiration date on the medication before you take it.

• During expiration, the diaphragm relaxes and air leaves the lungs.

• The lease runs until its expiration at the end of December.

• The nurse measured the patient's airflow on each expiration.

Where does expiration come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb exspirare (also written expirare), which combined ex, meaning 'out', with spirare, meaning 'to breathe'. Quite literally it described breathing out, and by a natural extension it came to mean breathing out for the last time, that is, dying. English took up the noun expiration in the late 1300s and early 1400s, borrowing it through Old French, and for a long time it carried both the medical sense of exhaling air and the figurative sense of something coming to an end. The same spirare root still breathes through a whole family of relatives, including 'respiration', 'inspire', and 'spirit', which is useful to remember because the tricky middle of expiration is the silent, unstressed 'spir' that adults often mangle. Today the everyday meaning is the lapsing or termination of a fixed period, such as a contract, a passport, or a carton of milk, while the breathing sense survives mainly in physiology.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• spir (from spirare: to breathe)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)