Pant

How to spell pant

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pant

What does pant mean?

1. verbTo breathe with short, quick, audible breaths, usually after exertion or in heat.

Pant in a sentence

• After the long climb she had to pant to catch her breath.

• The dog began to pant heavily in the afternoon heat.

Where does pant come from?

Language of origin: French

The verb 'pant' arrived in Middle English as 'panten', meaning to breathe hard and quickly, and it most likely came through Old French 'pantaisier', meaning to gasp or struggle for breath. That Old French verb is traced back to a Vulgar Latin form 'phantasiare', meaning to be oppressed by a nightmare or troubled by visions, which in turn rests on the Greek 'phantasia', meaning appearance or imagination, the same root that gives English 'fantasy' and 'phantom'. The link makes sense once you picture someone gasping and short of breath after a frightening dream. The sense narrowed in English to the simple physical act of rapid breathing after exertion or excitement. Because the chain of borrowing is partly reconstructed, scholars treat the earliest steps as probable rather than certain, though the short, plain spelling has stayed remarkably stable throughout.

How the word is built

• pant (single root verb; no prefix or suffix)